OPINION: No shortcuts  in the market

For centuries, different civilizations have tried to dominate markets, using price control as a tool to ensure that their population has access to consumer products at a reasonable cost. Although the measure can have positive effects in the short term, the distortions it produces in the economy are severe. On the one hand, the economic actors are sophisticated and can transfer the lost profit to the price of another product, as or more necessary than the one that was regulated. On the way, other effects must be considered, such as scarcity and the reduction of quality in the products. The decision to release the prices of some products is brave and necessary. Surely there will be speculators who take advantage of the opportunity to increase prices, without realizing that they will make it more difficult to justify the end of price control completely. The Government has other tools in the economic arsenal to lower costs and consumer prices. For example, a review of the rules of the electricity market could lower everyone’s costs without the need for subsidies. Perhaps the increase of the national production and the creation of peripheral markets contribute to improving the income and the feeding of the citizenship. The challenge is difficult, and the lesson is clear: there are no shortcuts in the markets.- LA PRENSA, July 6.