<Anchor> The
government has come up with measures to stabilize people's livelihoods to keep prices down.
In order to lower the price of ingredients such as pork and flour, we decided to remove tariffs for the time being, but reporter Nam Jeong-min examined how effective it would be.
<Reporter> This
is a large supermarket in Seoul.
Domestic pork belly has long exceeded 3,000 won per 100g, and imports have risen to the same level as the price of domestic pork belly a year ago.
[Seodong-gwon / Yangcheon-gu, Seoul: The price is so high that I wonder if the imported products will be okay.
.]
As the government announced the top 10 measures to stabilize people's livelihoods, it has put up a plan to keep up with rising prices at the forefront.
It has decided not to levy tariffs and value-added tax on imports of seven ingredients such as pork, cooking oil and flour, as well as coffee and beans until the end of the year.
In this case, the government expected that consumer prices would drop by 20% for pork and 10% for coffee beans.
In addition, side dishes such as kimchi, soybean paste, and red pepper paste, which are mainly sold in bags or plastic containers, will be exempted from VAT by 10% until next year.
The government does not directly control prices, but reduces costs to induce consumer price reductions.
[Coffee company president: If the (bean price) drops a lot, (coffee price) has to go down, but it’s not easy to lower it and raise it again…
.]
With this measure, the government expected that the inflation rate would fall 0.1%p after September.
The second supplementary budget is about the extent to which money is released and rising prices are reversed.
The inflation rate, which threatens 5%, is mainly caused by external factors such as rising raw material prices, so it is evaluated that this measure alone is not effective in catching inflation.