The devaluation of the Colombian peso is still not felt in inflation according to Dane figures

In the monthly report delivered by the National Administrative Department of Statistics (Dane), Juan Daniel Oviedo, director of the entity, announced that the variation for August was 0.09%, showing an inflation of 3.03% over the year year and 3.75% annual. Oviedo added that the annual variation means a correction to the upward trend that occurred in July with 3.79%, being the result of being below the average of analyst expectations.

Although the depreciation of the Colombian peso generally has an important effect on the behavior of prices due to the fact that it increases imported goods, the historical maximum prices recorded in August when reaching an exchange rate of $ 3,477 did not affect inflation of the eighth month of the year, that the market calculated to be 3.82% on average.

Regarding the dollar, Oviedo said they found that "it plays a decisive role in the inputs in poultry, pork and eggs, however, there are no contributions that are strictly positive that allow us to explain that the dollar generates inflation." In spite of this, he pointed out that "there is a dollar effect on international ticket fares", which somewhat affected prices in the eighth month of the year.

Oviedo said that "today we present an inflation with correction effect that puts us at levels of 2017, beginning of 2015 and mid-2011".

Even though food and non-alcoholic drinks had been in first place for some time, in this report they went down and stopped affecting the indicator. In that sense, Oviedo said that this item “is not the one that is causing inflation problems, but that it is correcting the inflation behavior. It reduces the index by two basic points. ”

Restaurants and hotels explained three basic points, especially for food consumed outside the home. Transportation, meanwhile, provides a basic point explained by the increase in the urban transport rate of $ 200 pesos in Cali.

In the case of fuels, the director explained that "this month, unlike the previous month when inflation was seen by the price of fuels, it is neutral because prices did not rise and demand exceeded the quota of certain cities."

By cities, Pasto and Popayán were the ones with the highest monthly inflation for the eighth month of 2019. In addition, the leases for the Nariñense capital “are growing at twice the legal limit, that means 6% or 7%”. Regarding Bogotá, Oviedo said it is doing better than the rest of the country, as it had a correction and was 0.08%. Barranquilla had a price variation of 0%; Cali, one of 0.1%; and Medellín, of 0.17%.

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