Speaking at a press conference in the southern coastal city of Split, Grbin said that the government should have acted four months ago rather than announce only yesterday measures that he did not expect would improve people’s lives.
He acknowledged that the only thing the government had done then was cap fuel prices, which increased again as soon as the prices were unfrozen.
Grbin said that fuel prices could only jump unless there were other measures, such as those proposed by the SDP, including the new method of VAT calculation for fuel, reduction of excise taxes, and floating excise taxes.
Speaking of the measures for combating inflation, he said that the government should show empathy and responsibility and change the present system. There are a lot of measures that can be taken, such as tax cuts on food and introducing an inflation allowance for pensioners, he added.
A s a long-term measures, the SDP proposes a change to the method of pension indexation to at least slightly improve life for pensioners and make their life more decent.
MP Branko Grčić said that the government was slow in responding to inflation and that it should change the method of VAT calculation for fuel and introduce an inflation allowance for pensioners because as many as 600,000 of them lived on the brink of poverty.
Commenting on a recent threat by Split’s deputy mayor, Bojan Ivošević, to a Slobodna Dalmacija newspaper editor, Grbin said that in a country where the prime minister treats reporters arrogantly such behaviour has become normal rather than the exception.
Grbin said that what Ivošević had done was unacceptable and should never happen. “A threat in itself is unacceptable, and making a threat just because an official is not satisfied with the way a newspaper writes about him is a step beyond that,” Grbin said.
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