Argentina’s yearly inflation plunged to 84.5% in January 2025, according to figures from the INDEC statistics bureau released on Thursday. The figure is 33.3 percentage points down from the previous month.

It is the first time the index has come in below 100% since January 2023. Large drops in the annual figure over the past two months reflect Argentina’s exit from a wave of very high inflation a year earlier: prices rose by a quarter in December of 2023 and by 13% in January of 2024.

Monthly inflation fell to 2.2% in January, the lowest since July 2020, when Argentina was in strict lockdown because of COVID-19. December’s figure was 2.7%.

Presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni celebrated the news minutes after the figures were published. “It’s the lowest monthly inflation since July 2020, when Argentines were living in confinement and the economy was paralyzed because of the quarantine decreed by ex-President Fernández,” he wrote on his WhatsApp channel.

Seasonal hikes drove the restaurants and hotels category pricing up the most, with a 5.3% rise. That category had the greatest weight in the Greater Buenos Aires and Cuyo regions. It was followed by housing and utilities, which grew by 4%.

In the rest of Argentina, food and non-alcoholic beverages had the greatest influence on the index, with prices ticking up 1.8%.

Conversely, the clothing and footwear category saw a modest decline, with prices down 0.7%.

In January, full-year figures for 2024 showed that inflation in Argentina had plummeted to 117.8% from 211.4% in 2023. 

The dramatic slowdown in the rate at which prices are rising is President Javier Milei’s signature achievement to date. However, the slowdown went hand-in-hand with a biting recession that left more than half of Argentina’s population in poverty in the first half of 2024.