By Miguel Lo Bianco and Lucila Sigal
BUENOS AIRES, March 30 (Reuters) - As Argentina's over
100% inflation rate saps earning power and outstrips wages,
Jorge Pedro Armoa, 67, has found a painful solution: juggling
three jobs as a metal worker, soccer coach and part-time
salesman of medical creams, flip flops and honey.
Armoa, who lives in a small home in the outskirts of capital
city Buenos Aires, gets up early every day for his seven-day
working week to stave off poverty that affects almost four in 10
people in the South American country.
"The situation is complex. Salaries are very low, things are
very expensive. So sometimes it's not enough," said Armoa, a
metal mold factory worker who is the technical director of a
local soccer team and funds his own small business.
Argentinians are battling through a painful economic crisis
with annual inflation at 102.5% and expected to climb further,
strict capital controls warping the peso's value, and tumbling
foreign currency reserves raising fears about future defaults.
Poverty, which had edged down due to state support during
the COVID-19 pandemic, is estimated to have shot back up to
nearly 40% at the end of last year from 36.5% in the first half
of 2022, as inflation has eroded the purchasing power of wages.
"Our projection for the poverty rate ... is around 40%,"
said Martín González Rozada, an economist and professor of
econometrics at the Universidad Di Tella, adding it was likely
even higher in the early part of this year.
"In terms of the increases in working people's incomes, that
income has increased less than the inflation of the total basic
food basket," he added, pointing out that around half of the
country's children lived in poor households.
Government handouts and subsidies have kept down levels of
extreme poverty, but that may come under pressure as the state
tries to overturn a deep fiscal deficit and reduce spending as
dollars are scarce and a drought has hit the key farming sector.
Many of Argentina's nearly 46 million people are unable to
pay for the total basic basket of goods and services, which
costs 177,000 pesos per month (some $849).
Armoa, even with his three salaries and income from his
wife, a teaching assistant, often struggles to get by.
"With the issue of the price of things, it's difficult to
live. But hey, sometimes we get there and sometimes we have
scrape by to get there," said Armoa while chopping onions at his
home to improvise a dinner.
"You have to put a positive face on things, good energy and
think that tomorrow things will be better."
(Reporting by Miguel Lo Bianco and Lucila Sigal; Editing by
Nicolas Misculin, Adam Jourdan and Richard Chang)
Messaging: adam.jourdan.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))
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