Argentines have long bemoaned trade barriers that occasionally led to shortages of imported car tires, iPhones and medicine. But these days, women here are ruing the scarcity of a much more personal item: tampons. On Friday, retailers and tampon distributors said they were scrambling to arrange the delivery of fresh shipments, possibly from Brazil, as early as next week. For now, women are finding it nearly impossible to find tampons at pharmacies and smaller supermarkets around the country—an embarrassing situation for President Cristina Kirchner ’s government, which has had to publicly address the problem. [...] The shortages stem from another scarcity issue—the lack of U.S. dollars. Argentina doesn’t have enough dollars on hand to pay down its debt while also paying for critical imports like fuel and supplying dollars to importers. Economists say with dollars in short supply, the bureaucracy has to decide who gets the dollars that are availableand some importers inevitably lose out. “We have ended up with a socialist system in which one bureaucrat decides what you import or produce at which price and when,” said Roberto Cachanosky, an Argentine economist. Most of the tampons sold in Argentina are imported. Industry officials say the shortages are coming just as demand is rising in line with hot summer temperatures and the beginning of beach season.
Posted on: Wed, 14 Jan 2015 23:07:33 +0000
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