Expect Cost of Living Increase as Short-Term Government Measures End, Warns DLP Vice President

Bajans are being told they will start to see and feel the effects of a cost of living increase over the next couple of weeks as a number of short-term measures implemented by the Government come to an end.

The caution has come from the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) second vice president Ryan Walters who urged residents to brace themselves for the inevitable.

“Have you noticed the increases in the supermarket over the past few weeks? You know why? It is because social partners’ Food Prices Compact came to an end. When we [were] jamming a couple weeks ago, the prices were going up, they were jamming too.

During the hype of Crop Over, these things were happening under our noses,” he said at a political meeting in Deacon’s Farm, St Michael on Sunday night.

“It ain’t over. That reduced VAT [Value Added Tax] on your light bill comes to an end in a couple of weeks.”

In February this year, the reduced VAT on electricity bills which went into effect from August 1, 2022, to January 3, 2023 was extended for eight months, and is therefore due to come to an end at the end of September.

Domestic customers are paying 7.5 per cent VAT on the first 250 kilowatt-hours rather than the usual 17.5 per cent rate. A second six-month prices social compact giving consumers an ease in prices on 47 items, which followed the first one implemented from July 21, 2022 to January 31, 2023, has also ended.

“When we are out there buying new shoes, new bags, school clothes and hoping for the best for the new school term, these things will be happening and we have not heard a peep out of this Government,” Walters asserted.

He chided the Social Partnership for not speaking up for consumers.

“We have not heard a peep from the Social Partnership that is supposed to be looking out for our interests. This is not a Social Partnership; it is a Government and private sector partnership. It is time for permanent solutions, not a six-month extension, not a three month here, a four month there. We have permanent problems and we need permanent solutions,” he said.

Walters, who will this weekend contest the party’s presidential elections, lamented that the cost of living had increased since 2018 when the Barbados Labour Party (DLP) was returned to office.

“Before 2018, we used to say, ‘let’s talk about cost of living’. Now we gotta say, ‘let’s speak about the high cost of living’. Your dollar in 2018 was worth a dollar. Today it is 77 cents,” he charged.

“Since this government took office in 2018, . . . the cost of goods has risen at a rate of at least three times faster. Cumulative inflation for the five years before 2018 totalled 8.5 per cent. Cumulative Inflation for the five years since 2018 totalled 23.2 per cent – three times more than the usual rate of inflation. But what is remarkable about this, is that it is against a very strange backdrop…. $1 billion of VAT was written off by the Government.