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Food prices in Argentina

R - EXCEL
Project image

This project analyses the increase of prices in food in Argentina over the period of a month. Firstly, the following groups of food were selected: meat and products of animal origin, fruits and vegetables and legumes and grains. Then, specific products were selected for each group according to the the basic food basket of the National Statistics and Census Institute (INDEC).

Data mining and data cleaning

During 31 days data mining was carried out through the web site of a supermarket and data cleaning was made using the following R script:

Every food category was analysed in Excel in order to find outliers, which were then removed in R.

As the graphic shows, some food categories didn´t have the information of the price, such like "carnaza" and "espinazo", so they were removed.

Daily, the new data was appended to the existing one and records were deleted if the product title was not repeted the same number of times as days with available information, that is, if the individual product did not appear every day (checked using an Excel formula) it was deleted in order to avoid that the variation in the price is given by variations in the product selection.

Thus, we arrive at a base with 11.935 observations for the 385 products extracted daily between January 27 and February 26.

Finally, using dynamic tables, graphs and formulas, the Excel dashboard was developed.

Some conclusions

  • Inflation between January 27 and Febreuary 26 was 6.77%

  • The item which price increased the most was legumes, close to 58%

  • The item which price increased the least was vegetables by 2%, being this, together with fruits, the two items with the greatest fluctuation in prices, wich may be due to seasonality and weather conditions.

  • Although the price of meat increased by 15%, beef price is the one that increased the most, while fish and chicken incrising below 10%. The product which price increased the most is the flank, with an increase of 100%.

  • The category with the highest prices is cold cuts, followed by dairy products and meat.

  • Although legumes were the ones which price increased the most, the maximum price per kilo of legumes is $2.000 and the average price per kilo is $1.000.