OPPOSITION Leader James Nomane has called on Government to immediately remove tariff on fuel and essential food imports.
“The Consumer Price Index (CPI) data confirms with import price pass-through accounts for 32 per cent of inflation, fuel and energy costs 22 per cent, and currency depreciation 14 per cent.
Together, these three government-addressable drivers alone constitute 68 per cent of the cost-of-living crisis,” he said.
“This Government has had every tool available to reduce these CPI drivers, and it has used none of them.
“To curb inflation and reduce the cost-of-living crisis, the Opposition therefore demands immediate measures be enacted through an emergency recall of Parliament and the passing of a supplementary budget.”
Nomane said the Government must remove tariffs on fuel and essential food imports immediately.
“Government taxes and levies contribute five percent directly to CPI, a burden that Parliament can remove today,” he said.
“Tariff relief on fuel, rice, cooking oil, tinned fish, and Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) is not a complex policy exercise.
“It requires political will.”
He said reducing the fuel import tariff alone would partially offset the 38 per cent to 82 per cent price surges announced by the Independent Consumer and Competition Commission (ICCC) this week and ease the transport cost driving food inflation across every province.
“The Government should also enforce a 30 per cent maximum markup on all imported food staples immediately,” he said.
“Price gouging is destroying PNG families and a 50kg bag of rice lands in Port Moresby at K85 but retails at K145 that is a 71 per cent markup.”
Nomane said the legal framework permitting a regulated 30 per cent maximum markup exists but the Government simply refused to enforce it.
“At 30 per cent regulated markup, that same bag of rice retails at K110.50, saving a family K34.50 per bag will be considered a household earning K500 per fortnight, spending 70 per cent, or K350 on food.”
He added that the regulated markup on core staples alone could return K70 to K90 per fortnight to that family and that is PMV fares, school fees and medicine.
“That is the difference between dignity and destitution,” he said.
He said the ICCC has already recommended fiscal relief measures to this government but the government continues to sleep whilst PNG families suffer.
“The Opposition will not allow this negligence to stand unchallenged so parliament must be recalled now,” he said.
