YPOIK: "Support for the vulnerable will continue"

The determination of the Government to continue its support to the vulnerable groups of the population in the face of the growing inflationary tendencies and the resulting accuracy was expressed by the Minister of Finance Konstantinos Petridis, who spoke on the sidelines of the presentation of the Plan for walls Nicosia.

As the Minister noted, "unfortunately we are indeed living in an era of inflation, not only in Cyprus, but in the entire European Union. The reason is purely exogenous, due to the war in Ukraine and the rise in oil and gas prices, due to the fact that 30% of grain production goes out of world production due to the situation in Ukraine and Russia, due to sanctions. "It's not something that any country can deal with on its own."

"What we are doing and have done and will continue to do is to try to mitigate the consequences as much as possible, especially to the most vulnerable groups," Petridis said, adding that Cyprus is the only country in the EU that has and horizontal measures: "There is no other country that has reduced the fuel tax on fuel horizontally and for all, other countries have chosen to give only some benefits only to the vulnerable, we have reduced the VAT on electricity for several months, from 19% at 10%. We also targeted the vulnerable and reduced it from 19% to 5%. Due to the increase in fuel prices we did other targeted actions, such as a 50% increase in benefits in mountainous areas. "We have given 8,5 million to the last ministerial year alone for the assistance of the livestock in order to face the increases of the prices of the feed and of the grains, in addition to the other 16 million that have been given to the livestock".

"We will continue to do this as long as our forces allow. "But because of the uncertainty that prevails and because we do not know how long this situation will continue, we will definitely have to safeguard some forces of the state because of this uncertainty", he added.

Commenting on the current inflation trends, the Minister said that indeed they were not forecast globally: "We have used several of the reserves to support society during the pandemic and one of the reasons we see that consumption is still despite inflation is quite high, it is precisely because incomes were supported and increased, even deposits during the pandemic, this of course at an incredible budgetary cost to the state.

As he stressed, from now on "consistency is needed, we will monitor the situation, times are difficult. "I do not hide the fact that the prosperity that has been built in Europe in recent years has been due in large part to the relatively low price of fuel."

"These things are changing, it will not be without cost. I did not popularize and I will never popularize myself, there will be costs due to the situation that is taking shape. "I hope the inflationary trends calm down, but we need to know that we still have the cheapest fuel in the EU at the moment."

"We will try to aim at protecting the vulnerable and from there on through growth, through investing we will try to increase incomes. "Certainly the next period, the next years will be quite difficult not only for the Cypriot, but especially for the European economy", he said.

He added that inflation for April closed at 7,1%, which is lower than other EU countries, which, as he said, is a very bad phenomenon as it erodes inflation and purchasing power.

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