ARGENTINE FOOD SHORTAGE

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27010, 9 April 1953, Page 13

ARGENTINE FOOD SHORTAGE

ECONOMIC TROUBLES FACE PERON ULTIMATUM ON COST OF LIVING (Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.) (Rec. 10 p.m.) LONDON, April 8. “Intense public interest has been aroused by General Peron’s revelation that trade unions have presented him with a virtual ultimatum regarding the sudden rise in the -cost of living in recent weeks, and the serious situation for workers of the accentuated shortage, as well as the cost, of sundry basic foods that has developed in Buenos Aires,’’ says the “Financial Times.’’

“Beef supplies are completely inadequate to meet consumer demand in the federal capital and its immediate suburbs. Serious economic consequences are seen in the disproportionately increased demand this has created for other foodstuffs. General Per on denies the existence of a cattle shortage and, identifying himself with, as he says, the justice of the trade unions’ demands, he denounces farmers in vigorous, even violent terms, for their alleged speculative actions in withholding animals foom the Buenos Aires market to take advantage of the higher prices obtainable on other markets in the interior. * Although the beef shortage and the quasi-famine prices Buenos Aires butchers have been charging for the small supplies available have served to precipitate the present crisis, these happenings relate to a more complex and more widespread economic maladjustment. General Peron admitted this when he said the rise in living costs had latterly been aggravated by the fact that family incomes had declined as the result of a lower level of industrial employment. “Despite its seeming contradiction, this is the case, and the fact that prices should be rising when the purchasing power in the hands of the public is declining independently of the effects of the higher prices, only serves to illustrate the complexity of the present difficulties.”