The NEWS (Monrovia)
8 April 2008
editorial
Monrovia — The government last week announced price hikes of some essential commodities which many citizens viewed would lead to an increase in social economic hardships.
According to the government, the hikes were necessary to avoid shortages on the local market in the midst of global price increases of these commodities.
But since the hikes were announced, there have been protests from many quarters of the society, with some citizens calling for a reduction in import taxes to cushion the effect of global price hikes on the local market.
It is observed that with the average salary of civil servants in the neighborhood of US$50, the price hikes are an obvious strain on the purchasing power of ordinary Liberian.
However, despite such strenuous social economic conditions that the price hikes could pose, if level of local production remains negligible, we are afraid that the situation could become worst in the near future.
The continuous reduction of taxes is a short-term remedy that cannot be sustained in the face of continuous global price hikes, because in the long run, continuous global price hikes could cancel out taxes to the detriment of the government and to the nation.
The government certainly needs as much taxes as it can get to fulfill its obligation to provide for the nation's basic necessities such as roads, schools, health care, among others.
However, what we think Liberians ought to be insisting upon the government is to have the national development agenda driven by the huge and diverse need for local production.
The recent US$30 million Concession Agreement between the government and the African Development Aid Commercial Incorporated for large scale commercial rice production in Liberia is the way forward.
And as we commend the government for such a productive initiative, we urge it to take similar approaches for local production in concession agreements involving the mining, rubber and timber sectors as well as other extractive sectors of the country.
With a huge and diverse local productive base, the local market would be less impacted by global inflationary trends and thereby ease social economic hardship of the citizens.
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