Argentina's Mileise: University chancellors warn Milei that money will only last until May

The problem afflicting Argentina's universities is easy enough to understand: despite annual inflation at 288%, their budgets for 2024 will be the same as in 2023 - reflecting deep budget cuts under the new, far-right Javier Milei administration.

Although the intention of increasing operating budgets by 65% was discussed, government officials continue to refuse to confirm the emergency hike.

Some universities have declared an economic emergency - restricting the number of students per course, moving out of rental offices, suspending the purchase of inputs, services and equipment or digging into their savings.

The University of Buenos Aires School of Medicine - whose teaching hospital cares for 1,000 mostly indigent patients daily - shut off lights to most of its buildings this week after its budget was cut by 26% in nominal terms, and 80% in real terms.

The neighboring School of Dentistry has reportedly run out of supplies for its graduate students.

“This was complicated by the fact that on Monday, we suffered the theft of computers,” Dean Pablo Rodríguez lamented. “This was due to these measures” - referring to the partial blackout.

Numerous grade schools in Buenos Aires and elsewhere have suffered a wave of similar thefts recently.

Unfit

When the Milei administration took office in December, academics called for a 300% increase in this year's public university budgets - which last year received an already-modest 1.4 trillion pesos ($4.5 billion at the time) in federal funds for 55 universities with 2 million students between them.

Milei vetoed the request - though he later signed an agreement with Denmark to buy 24 Reagan-era F-16s (at $338 million a piece - excluding weaponry) that even war-torn Ukraine deemed unfit.

Many in academia say that unless the situation changes, they will not be able to guarantee classes beyond April or May.

The University of Buenos Aires - the nation's largest, and often ranked among the best in Latin America - “will have to close or not provide the functions we usually provide” Chancellor Ricardo Gelpi warned.

Students, faculty and supporters are planning a massive march on Tuesday to protest the funding crisis.

At: https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/argentina/milei-in-conflict-with-universities-chancellors-warn-money-will-only-last-til-may.phtml

Argentina's Mileise: yearly inflation soars to 288% - the highest in the world

Inflation in Argentina is now running at 287.9%, figures released on Friday afternoon by the government’s INDEC statistics bureau showed.

The number, 9.7 points higher than February’s, indicates that Argentina’s runaway price hikes remain the worst in the world.

Monthly inflation cooled to 11% in March, a two-point drop from February, according to the report. The number marks the third monthly decrease in a row after it hit 25.5% in December, the highest since February 1991.

Cumulative inflation since far-right President Javier Milei was elected in November has surpassed 90%, in four months.

The biggest monthly increase was in education, which was driven up 52.7% by the rise in private school fees - pushing hundreds of thousands of middle-class families into the already-strained public school system.

It was followed by telecommunications, up 15.9% mainly due to phone and internet bills. Then came housing, up 13.3% off the back of rising electricity bills.

“The recession, the drop in revenues, and the drop in sales are the reasons behind the lower [monthly] rate,” said Sebastián Menescaldi, associate director of EcoGo consultancy, adding that it was “not good news.”

Argentine consumers and businesses have since been walloped by utility rate hikes averaging 200% for electricity, and 300% for gas - which analysts believe might push April inflation to up to 20% monthly.

At: https://buenosairesherald.com/economics/argentinas-yearly-inflation-soars-to-288

A popular Argentine meme ridicules far-right President Javier Milei after he asserted this week that "prices are falling like a piano" after consulting a Bot account that purportedly measured prices at Jumbo - a Chilean-owned supermarket chain popular in Argentina.

The administrator of the Bot account promptly revealed that it was an unofficial "social experiment that never analyzed prices."

A doubling in annual inflation rates since October - the month before Milei was elected - to 288%, has pushed an estimated 6 million Argentines into poverty just as of January.

And massive utility rate hikes of 200 to 300% in April have triggered a wave of small business closures and layoffs.