By Bida Elly David
Economic expert is criticising the continued market inflation that has been affecting the market on poor price control mechanism by the government it’s through supervision.
Abraham Mathoch, an economist and the Vice Chancellor for Dr. John Garang University made the remark to No.1 Citizen Daily Newspaper in a telephone interview yesterday.
He said that the constant market inflation that has been affecting the market was due to high dependence of the country on imports and passiveness towards promoting domestic production.
His challenge came following the on-going market inflation through the speedy countrywide skyrocketing of prices of food stuffs and non-food items in the markets.
“Our economy is not productive and the country normally depends on imports. If our economy was productive, we would be able to produce more supply and through them, prices on food and non- food items would drop. The only problem that we are facing is the poor price control. It means that government should have to supervise prices that go up without any reason otherwise the failures always define the reason of price increase,” Dr. Mathoch said.
Nevertheless, the economic expert has encouraged country’s economic sector to produce domestic goods that would reduce prices of imported goods from foreign countries.
“We need to introduce import substitutions goods; that is to say domestically government should encourage the economic sector to produce goods which are imported but sometimes imported goods are actually cheaper if we are to use the theory of comparative advantage,” he said.
“The goods that are imported are the goods that are produced cheaply coming in as imports at cheaper prices. Because there is no supply available nationally and the demand is high, we are always depending on imported goods. Even the local goods are rising in prices which are not actually imported. It is the tradition of our people to increase prices of goods in the market,’’ the expert continued.
Moreover, the University’s Vice Chancellor criticised traders for blaming tax institutions on imposition of tariffs on their enterprises, since it was unavoidable and contribution that later returns inform of services to the citizens.
He underscored those regulations on tax payment will be the only solution limiting them on certain amount that will not affect their businesses and reciprocate to hurt the consumers.
“Paying taxes are unavoidable. It is a contribution that comes back to citizens including the people selling inform of security, good roads, other services and so on. The only way is to control but the taxes should not be very high,” he said.
However, Abraham reiterated that educating the public especially traders by the concerned government on tax regulations and management would be a remedy to clear doubts.
“Taxation is institutional. There are taxes collected at national and state level as well as county level. They are normally put in a way that is rationed. It should not be highly charged, ’he said.