Finance Minister Koo Yun-cheol, who serves concurrently because the deputy prime minister for financial affairs, speaks throughout a gathering of economy-related ministers on the authorities advanced in Seoul, Tuesday. Yonhap
Finance Minister Koo Yun-cheol on Tuesday pledged the federal government’s all-out efforts to rein in food-related inflation amid persistently excessive costs affecting folks’s day by day lives.
Shopper costs, a key gauge of inflation, elevated 2.4 p.c from a 12 months earlier final month, surpassing the Financial institution of Korea’s 2 p.c goal for 3 consecutive months largely as a consequence of an increase within the costs of agricultural and petroleum merchandise.
“With utmost vigilance, the federal government will make each effort to regulate meals costs as worth stabilization is each the start and the tip of making certain folks’s livelihoods,” Koo mentioned whereas presiding over a ministerial assembly on the financial system.
Koo vowed to mobilize all accessible instruments, together with tariff-rate quotas, to stabilize the costs of key objects, whereas taking strict motion towards unfair practices that disrupt market order.
As a part of such efforts, the federal government will develop tariff-rate quotas on main meals and feed components, the minister mentioned. The system permits a specified quantity of imports to enter the nation beneath lowered tariff charges for a particular time period.
In accordance with the finance ministry, 22 objects presently topic to emergency quotas, resembling cocoa beans and occasional, will proceed to profit from preferential tariff charges.
Tariff-rate quotas on 10 food-ingredient objects, together with sugar and occasional, shall be prolonged by way of the tip of subsequent 12 months, whereas quotas on 12 objects, resembling processed egg merchandise, shall be prolonged till June subsequent 12 months.
Particularly, the tariff-rate quantity for sugar shall be expanded by 20 p.c, from 100,000 tons this 12 months to 120,000 tons subsequent 12 months, the ministry mentioned.
Tariff-rate quotas on 9 feed components, together with barley, will even be prolonged by way of the tip of subsequent 12 months to ease burdens on farmers and assist stabilize livestock product costs.
The ministry added that the lowered tariff charges on liquefied pure fuel (LNG), in addition to on liquefied petroleum fuel (LPG) and crude oil used to supply LPG, will stay in place by way of the primary half of subsequent 12 months.
To assist the struggling petrochemical business, the federal government will even keep the zero-percent tariff on crude oil used for naphtha manufacturing all through your complete 12 months.
The tariff changes are the most recent in a sequence of presidency measures aimed toward stabilizing costs, amid rising considerations that rising power and meals prices might disproportionately have an effect on low- and middle-income households.
