Argentina's poor still paying the price of economic stagnation

Growth may be high now, but there is much to do before the unemployed can stop scavenging for food

Ramon Caballero pedals into a dimly lit warehouse towing a rusted cart loaded with flattened cardboard boxes, a sack full of broken glass and his 11-year-old son.

After scouring hundreds of blocks in search of recyclable refuse in Cordoba, Argentina's third-largest city, they are ready to cash in. Forty kilos of cardboard and glass get them two wrinkled 2-peso notes (worth 70 US cents each) and a few coins; barely enough to buy a package of spaghetti, a kilo of bread and a litre of milk. Mr Caballero is not complaining - he has seen worse days.

'Thank god we're surviving,' said Mr Caballero, 34, who began scavenging four months ago after more than a year of scraping by on the occasional odd job. 'Last year, we didn't have enough to eat. I had to sell everything. My truck, my car, even my bed. I was left with nothing.'

Two years after hitting rock bottom, Argentina's economy is creeping back. Last year, it expanded 8.7 per cent - more than any other nation in the Western Hemisphere - and Argentina's central bank is predicting an additional 8 per cent growth this year. But in much of the country, the turnaround has been only faintly perceptible, if at all.

Nearly 20 per cent of the workforce is still unemployed or living on US$52-a-month welfare and 48 per cent of the population remains below the poverty line - US$251 a month for a family of four.

Many of Argentina's hard-hit poor and middle class say economic conditions are improved only in so far as they are not getting worse. Economists say the economy is not so much growing, as climbing back to pre-crisis levels after five years of recession.