The increased cost of mass transportation and part of the increase to taxi costs will be subsidized by the government, Liu said.
The government expected the hikes will result in an increase of 0.7 percent in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) this year, to 3.08 percent.
The hike in fuel and electricity costs will negatively influence economic growth, but the government said that an increase of 0.5 percent to 0.7 percent in annual economic growth is expected because it has proposed some other proposals to offset the negative impact.
In an interview with ETTV last night, Liu apologized for advancing the date of the hikes.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators yesterday criticized the price hikes, saying the new government kept making the same mistake of giving advance notice of a price surge.
DPP Legislator Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) said Liu seemed at a loss about what to do regarding utility fees.
Liu may be the first premier in the country’s history to announce a three-stage fuel price hike — the first stage took effect at midnight, the second will happen in July and the third will soon follow afterwards, she said.
She also accused Minister of Economic Affairs Yiin Chii-ming (尹啟銘) of misleading the public, saying even an elementary-school student would know that commodity prices should be compared with national income.
Taking the 92 unleaded petroleum as an example, Kuan said the price in Singapore was 1.38 times more than that in Taiwan, but Singapore’s national income was 2.09 times that of Taiwan.
DPP Legislator William Lai (賴清德) said he would like to see the government map out a plan to calm public anticipation for price increases and curb the artificial ramping-up of prices to prevent inflation getting out of hand.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chiang Lien-fu (江連福) slammed CPC Corp, Taiwan (中油) over its recent increase in the price of engine oil.
Chiang said the company had “quietly” increased the prices of 12 of its gear lubricants last Monday.
Machine oil for tractors went up by 30 percent while automobile lubricants had increased by 24 percent, placing a huge burden on farmers and economically disadvantaged families, Chiang said.
He accused the company of planning to hike the prices again on Sunday, the date originally announced for gasoline price hikes.
However, Yen Chen (閻澄), a chief officer of CPC’s lubricant product department, said the company decided to raise prices last week because the cost of raw materials had risen by 30 percent as of this month.
Yen said engine lubricant prices might go up again next month, but he promised that the company would evaluate all possibilities. Meanwhile, CPC vice president Chu Shao-hua (朱少華), who was also at the conference, said the company did not have the power to ban consumers from storing gasoline.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CNA
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