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Academics call for action on price hikes

Amid rising consumer prices, the government should consider tax rebates to stimulate domestic demand or levying energy taxes to cut down the use of fuel, academics said yesterday.

“Tax rebates will work better than massive government expenditure to boost consumer spending,” Norman Yin (殷乃平), a professor at National Chengchi University’s department of money and banking, said yesterday.

Yin said that the government was not doing enough to prevent consumer panic in anticipation of further price hikes and that government spending plans could further raise consumer prices and inflationary pressure.

Kenneth Lin (林向愷), an economics professor at National Taiwan University, agreed, saying that the allocation of government spending to boost economic growth would not help to narrow the money gap between the nation’s rich and poor.

“The biggest problem facing Taiwan is that workers’ salaries and incomes have seen no growth at all,” Lin said.

Former Democratic Progressive Party legislator Chen Min-jen (陳明真) urged the government to quickly impose an energy tax on businesses to push them to reduce power and fuel consumption, saying that oil prices would likely continue to rise.

With the implementation of such new energy taxes, the public would avoid wasting energy to cut down on household expenses, Chen said.
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