When Flor Rosenblatt’s landlord told her that her rent would triple she was worried, but not overly surprised. Such increases have become commonplace in Argentina, which is in the grip of one of the world’s worst inflation crises . Annual inflation has hit nearly 300 per cent – more than 100 times the rate in the UK – with prices rising by around 10 per cent every month.
This has made life tough for ordinary Argentines and the latest poverty figures showed more than half now live in poverty. A visit to the supermarket can reveal prices for some items double what they were the day before and a member of staff printing out new price tags is a common feature. Paper menus in restaurants are a rarity with QR codes you can scan with your phone becoming the norm: much easier to change the prices digitally.
Those that do things the old-fashioned way have menus with layers of stickers over the prices, a tell-tale sign of the increases. Read Next How I Manage My Money: Nurse, on £1.7k a month, who puts travel before pension Amid this crisis, families are trying to find a way to get by.
“ My rent used to be 120,000 pesos (around £100),” says Flor, 48. “From May onwards it is now 360,000 pesos – three times as much. I had a raise on my salary but it’s maybe just enough to cover that increase.
” Before the crisis, Flor, who lives in a middle-class neighbourhood in Buenos Aires, says she and her family would go out for dinner a few times a month. Now they think they wi.