When is gasoline going to go down and why YPF will be key in the inflation number

For the consultant, gasoline should drop around 16% to accommodate lower oil prices. If it happens, “it would have a direct impact on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) of 0.65 percentage points.”

This reduction, desired by the Government of Javier Milei, will not occur in the short term. The price stabilization system that YPF applied in the most critical months of the war in the Middle East, through which the increase of up to US$ 100 per barrel in international markets was not transferred to pumps, is now in place. reverse phase: the price does not fall to recover what was deferred in those months. The price today is around US$72 per barrel.

And when will it go down? By 1816, to completely compensate for this “buffer” scheme, “naphtha should be maintained at the current price.” until November“That current price averages $2,000 per liter, in the case of super gasoline.

But, according to the private operators he consulted ClarionNovember seems exaggerated. And the sharp reduction in fuel prices could be observed in September.

For refiners, the drop in prices could be seen in August and September. Horacio Marín, CEO and president of YPF, said that “it depends on the price of oil how long it will last; it takes a while.” From Córdoba, and in dialogue with La Voz, he acknowledged that he cannot specify how much it will drop. The executive noted that stabilization was maintained for 75 days. “It was good for YPF, it was good for consumers. Gasoline could not be increased,” he said.

An important businessman in the sector told this medium that, with an average price of US$ 75 per barrel, the refiners will complete the recovery in mid-August and, with those values, They could advance in a decline of 12%which would have an impact on inflation of half a percentage point.

In June, super gasoline averaged US$ 1.45 per liter, according to a report by former Energy Minister Daniel Montamat, being 4% below fuel import prices.

However, there are other components that weigh on the value. For example, taxes. The Government decided this month a 1% increase in the tax on Liquid Fuels and the Carbon Dioxide Tax. This update does not compensate for the delay in these taxes since 2024.

“Every month or almost every month we update the fuel tax, which has a big delayand this month the update is only one percent,” acknowledged this Thursday the coordinating secretary of Energy and Mining, Daniel González.

In the decree that established the update, the Government recognized that “in order to continue stimulating the growth of the economy through a sustainable fiscal path, it is necessary, for the products in question, to partially defer the remaining increases originated in the aforementioned updates.”

The Consumer Price Index published every month by Indec showed a monthly increase of 2.1% in May, which represented a slowdown compared to April. It was the second consecutive month of decline.