The threat of the tarps
Iván Escalante, the head of Profeco, said it clearly: they will put up those giant tarps again. The ones that say ‘Don’t load here, they blow the fence with the prices.’ Their goal is to publicly point out gas stations that charge “much more” than they should for regular gasoline and diesel.
The campaign starts today in almost the entire country. Only Baja California Sur and Quintana Roo are saved, due to that eternal tale of ‘logistics’.
“The idea is to place these tarps to inform consumers where the barrier with prices is being blown,” Escalante explained.
A virtual map will complete the strategy. Everything so that the consumer knows where they are putting their hand in their pocket. The national average price of regular gasoline, according to them, is 23.69 pesos.
The official discourse and what they don’t tell
Meanwhile, in the National Palace, President Claudia Sheinbaum released her version. He said that without the intervention of his government, gasoline would already cost more than 30 pesos per liter and diesel would exceed 32.
“The price of the magna cannot exceed 24 pesos,” he stated, attributing the ‘achievement’ to removing taxes.
He promised a meeting this week with gas stations to try to lower diesel prices further, whose current agreement is 28 pesos. And of course, he blamed the barrel of oil and “the situation in Iran.” A classic.
But here comes the good thing. Suddenly, the topic jumped into the basic basket. Sheinbaum acknowledged that “tomato is very expensive” and “beef went up.” So much so that he instructed the Secretary of the Treasury to personally go to the market to verify it.
“No one can take advantage of the current situation,” he emphasized regarding fuel prices.
A phrase that sounds good until you remember the middlemen and merchants who, by her own admission, are taking advantage of food. Coherence is conspicuous by its absence.
Profeco says it will also keep an eye on those base prices. A titanic task while deploying tarps across half the country. The uncomfortable question remains: will the tarps really cover the problem or will they just be a promotional patch?
