LKI Press Statement November 6, 2018
On the October 6.7 inflation, the NCR wage hike of Php 25.00 per day and suspension of excise taxes on fuels
Vic Dimagiba , President of Laban Konsyumer Inc. is pressing the immediate issuance of the implementing order on the suspension of the excise taxes on fuel products. The implementing order can result to a quicker turnaround in lowering inflation and offset the wage hike widely criticized by the labor sector. The suspension of the excise taxes becomes too urgent in the light of the wage hike authorized in the NCR which does not compensate for the inflation that consumers and workers have been enduring and suffering these past months. Dimagiba called on government to ?focus on lowering taxation burden to mitigate impact of inflation, as the current wage hike is still unfair and much too low compared to the current inflation.?
The group further emphasized that the rollbacks of fuel and power prices in the month of October , did not translate to an optimistic expectation of lowered inflation , albeit there were increases in 3 key commodities of transport ,utilities and food , except for food items in NCR .
Dimagiba explained that ?the 25.00 pesos wage increase translates to 4.8 percent hike. This amount is much, much lower than the NCR and National Inflation for the last 3 months of August to October 2018, especially for food, transport and utilities like water, electricity, gas and fuels?.
DImagiba thinks the wage hike should have been raised and aligned with the actual year to date inflation especially for food, transport and electricity as the PSA statistics show as follows;
National inflation
August: 6.4 September 6.7 October: 6.7
Food : 8.5 9.7 9.4
Transport: 7.8 8.0 8.8
Electricity, fuel, gas, 5.5 4.6 4.8
Water
NCR inflation 7.0 6.3 6.1
Food: 8.6 9.2 7.8
Transport: 10.2 10.3 10.5
Utilities, fuel, 7.8 4.2 5.0
Water, fuel
END.
For any inquiries or concerns, you may reach LKI President Vic Dimagiba at 0917-812-5546
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