Argentina fined supermarkets including Carrefour SA (CA) and Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s largest retailer, for failing to maintain adequate stocks of price-controlled goods after a devaluation of the peso.
Carrefour will be fined 1.3 million pesos ($166,462) and Wal-Mart was ordered to pay 604,000 pesos for violations detected through complaints by consumers, Trade Secretary Augusto Costa said at a news conference today in Buenos Aires. The other companies were Chilean retailer Cencosud SA’s local unit, Vea, Spanish supermarket chain Dia SA and local companies Coto and Chango Mas.
“The goal isn’t to hand out fines, it’s to comply with the price agreement on 194 basic goods,” Costa said. “But if there are violations we’ll continue to implement the law.”
The Argentine government has moved to control price increases after President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner let the peso tumble the most since 2002 in January to stem a fall in international reserves and make the South American nation’s exports more competitive. Consumer prices rose 3.7 percent in January from a month earlier, the government said in its first measure of a national inflation index. That would be the highest monthly figure in more than a decade, based on the Greater Buenos Aires index, which was the previous gauge.
The government reached an agreement with 10 supermarkets to cap prices on 194 basic goods that went into effect Jan. 1. The agreement, which includes providers, is subject to price revisions on a quarterly basis, according to Costa.
