By LORRAINE WOHI
EAST Sepik Governor Allan Bird says people need to know that it is not going to get better simple because there is 10% relief on GST.
East Sepik Governor Allan Bird made these remarks while speaking in support of the temporary reduction on 10% GST on selected household product by the Government up to six months starting April.
“The price of flour and the price of rice will continue to increase for a very simple reason as these two crops grown around the world depends highly on fertilizer,” he said. “And the two countries that are currently in the war are the two biggest producers of fertilizer.”
He added that the people also need to know that if 40% of the world’s fuel that Russia produce does not enter the world market than obviously the price of fuel is going to continue to increase that will then feed on to every other segment of society.
“Because of the lack of understanding on the issue, the majority of the people will blame the Government and perhaps the Government is responsible for a lot of things going wrong and not working well,” he said.
Bird added that the country is still trying to recover from impact of covid-19 and global economy downturn in the last two years.
He said whilst we hope that the ongoing conflict between the two countries at war will subsided in the next six months , there is no indication that it will. He urged people to be self-reliant and start growing local nutritious food.
“Therefore, people must learn to be self-sustaining and self-reliant. We need to encourage our people to eat food that are nutrients rich, and not the nutrient deficit food that is grown using fertilizer which is highly fertilizer dependent,” Governor Bird said.
He further added that the effect of Covid-19 and the tripled in cost of shipping containers is one of the reason a lot of our goods are not arriving on time. “The removal of the GST is not going to be a huge benefit if the war between the Russia and Ukraine continues for more than six months. The prices will continue to increase and that will take away these impact of the removal of GST, we must be aware of that,” Governor Bird warned.
