Inflation in Argentina soared to 109% year-on-year in April, the national statistics authority said today, beating analysts’ forecasts and causing despair and anger among consumers who are forced to make ever greater sacrifices to make ends meet.

Latin America’s third-largest economy recorded inflation of 8.4% month-on-month in April, higher than forecasts for 7.5%, bringing it to 108.8% year-on-year.

Rising prices have pushed one in four Argentines below the poverty line. “They have turned us into a country of beggars,” self-employed Carlos Andrada, 60, told Reuters as he searched for cheap vegetables at a street market in a Buenos Aires suburb. “You get desperate because you work all your life and (get to the point of) finding it difficult to even buy a tomato or a pepper,” he added.

Argentina’s fragile economy, which has faced 12 years of double-digit inflation, has been hit hard by the impact of recent drought on soybean, corn and wheat exports.

The national currency lost 20% of its value in a week and last month on the black market the exchange rate reached 500 pesos to the dollar. Commodity prices have climbed even higher, while the government will find it even more difficult to repay its $44 billion public debt to the IMF.

“The last time I came (to the public market), I paid 300 pesos for a kilo of peppers. Now for 300 pesos you get half a kilo,” said 70-year-old retiree Olivia Maria Belbruno. Expressing disappointment with the governments that have passed in recent years, he decided that the voters should do their self-criticism: “Let’s sit down and think, why we voted for them.”

“I’ve stopped going out to eat even once a month, I haven’t been on vacation anywhere for four years,” says Salvador Paterno, 64, who was recently forced to sell his car. “We use very little air conditioning and heating. Everyone breaks these habits to make ends meet, if they even make it,” he adds.

Poverty, which was gradually decreasing for two years, increased in 2022 and now plagues 39.2% of the population, in other words over 18 million citizens of the country.

In its most recent newsletter, Argentina’s central bank predicted in early May that inflation would exceed 126% year-on-year this year.