HDP demands abolishing taxes on basic needs such as medication

* Photo: HDP

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Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Spokesperson Ebru Günay talked about the effects of the current economic crisis at her weekly press conference in the HDP central office in Ankara yesterday (April 7).

Addressing President and ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) Chair Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Günay talked about the changes in the prices of pita, a type of flat bread traditionally eaten during Ramadan:

"A 400-gram pita used to be sold for 1.5 lira in 2012. It now weighs 330 gram and costs 6 lira. So, in the past 10 years, the Ramadan pita has shrunken by 70 grams and its price has increased five fold. Is it only to be blamed on the flour producers unable to procure wheat, the bakers unable to procure floor or AKP Chair Erdoğan, who says that he is an economist?"

According to HDP Spokesperson Ebru Günay, while 535 kilograms of granulated sugar could be bought with the minimum wage of 2,825 lira a few years ago, only 235 kilograms of sugar can be bought now even though the minimum wage has been increased to 4,253 lira.

Criticizing Erdoğan further for saying, "We will set an example to the world with the new economic model", Günay explained that "more export was at the root" of this saying. However, as noted by Günay, the foreign trade deficit of Turkey, which stood at 6.4 billion USD in the period of January-February 2021, increased to 18.1 billion USD in the first two months of 2022.

"So the new model has collapsed and the deficit has seen a three-fold increase," Ebru Günay underlined further.

'The cheapest labor in Europe'

Recalling that a 77-year-old citizen who had to work lost his life in an occupational homicide a few days ago, Günay also raised concerns that Turkey is the country with the cheapest labor in Europe:

As a result of Erdoğan's policy, the workers in Turkey have the cheapest elbow grease in Europe. While a worker earns 28.6 Euro per hour for her labor, this amount is 3.7 Euro in Turkey.

Criticizing Erdoğan for recommending young people "to go abroad at every opportunity", she said, "He thinks everyone studied at private schools in the US and bought yachts and houses like his children. Let alone dreaming of going abroad, people cannot even dream of traveling inside the country. The government expects that we get used to hunger, poverty and misery".

'Abolish the special consumption tax'

Referring further to the high cost of living, HDP's Günay recalled that the Chamber of Pharmacists made a call for abolishing the Value Added Tax (VAT) on medication. Reiterating this request, Günay said:

The Parliament should convene as soon as possible, remove the VAT on basic needs such as medication and it should start working to take the Special Consumption Tax (ÖTV) out of our lives.

Underlining the gap between the official consumer price index of the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) and the alternative data shared by the Inflation Research Group (ENAG), Ebru Günay indicated that while the former announced the annual inflation rate as 61.14 percent, the latter announced it as 142.6 percent, which accounts for a difference of 81 percent.

"The period which saw the highest inflation was in March 2002 with 65 percent. With the recent figures, the annual inflation rate has hit a 20-year high," HDP Spokesperson Günay stressed further. (AS/SD)