According to a report by the consulting firm Zentrix, 56.4% of Argentine households have resorted to credit in the last six months to pay for food, services, rent, and credit cards, while the majority cannot cover their monthly expenses with their current income. The 'Public Opinion Monitor' (MOP) report, accessed by the Argentine News Agency, revealed that nearly 6 out of every 10 Argentine households took on debt for daily expenses, and within that group, almost 9 out of 10 have already had difficulty paying it back. When specifying the reasons for seeking financing, the report stated that 'far from being associated with investment decisions, credit was mostly oriented towards covering basic expenses, in a context where 83.9% affirmed that their salary does not keep up with inflation and more than half of the population cannot make it to the 20th of each month.' The main uses of loans are concentrated in daily expenses, credit card payments, and the settlement of other debts, which indicates that 'financing is not aimed at generating future income, but at covering present needs.' In this sense, the consulting firm warned that 'the phenomenon describes a change in the function of debt: it ceases to be a financial tool and becomes a survival mechanism.' Likewise, it considered that 'the data describe a household-level adjustment mechanism that articulates in four stages: fall in purchasing power; difficulty in sustaining monthly consumption; recourse to indebtedness to cover that gap, and growing inability to meet those obligations.' The gap between INDEC and the pocketbook The report also sheds light on the credibility of official statistics. 65.8% of the population believes that the inflation data published by INDEC do not reflect the reality of their daily expenses. In this regard, it specified that 'it is not just a technical discussion about indices, but an increasingly visible gap between the official number and the economy lived in households,' referring to the distrust generated by the effect of inflation on wages. Regarding this aspect, it maintained that 'if the salary loses purchasing power and more than half of the population does not make it to the 20th of the month, the credibility of the data erodes, not only for what it measures, but for what it fails to correct in daily practice.' To this are added discussions that go beyond the specific data and affect trust in the body: the suspicion of political interference in public statistics and the perception that the baskets or weights do not accurately represent the actual consumption of households. Impact on Milei's image and the political board In this context, the economic deterioration began to take its toll on the image of the National Government. Although it stopped its downward inertia, the governor of Buenos Aires remains stuck at a 'ceiling' close to 30%, which limits his political expansion. The convergence between the personal bad situation and the evaluation of the country has consolidated a predominant scenario of critical assessments. On the opposition side, Axel Kicillof's image shows a slight stabilization after months of decline, although it remains in negative territory: 33.8% positive image versus 57.2% negative. In March, disapproval of Javier Milei's management reached 53.3%, representing a jump of 8.3 points from the previous measurement.
