Alexa Lightbourne, the Home Affairs Minister said the government has not underestimated the complexity of the matter
No timeline in sight on when cost of living burdens might start to ease, according to Home Affairs Minister today.
Minister Alexa Lightbourne today conceded there is no easy solution.
The Newly constituted Home Affairs Ministry will undertake a comprehensive review of the matter, through the first Cost-of-living summit.
Minister Alexa Lightbourne said it aims to collaborate Government, industry, labour, and the community input to examine the systemic drivers of Bermuda’s high costs.
A report will look for gaps in existing policies. Minister Lightbourne suggests the findings could including amendments to the Regulatory Authority Act to extend oversight powers across both regulated and unregulated markets.
Pressed on when the island’s vulnerable families and seniors can expect a reprieve from rising costs of groceries, utilities and other expenses – Minister Lightbourne insists that a solution must be sustainable and therefore, thorough.
Ms. Lightbourne said in her statement to the House today that the government has not underestimated the complexity of this task.
Meanwhile, Opposition Minister Michael Fahy replied to the statement today criticised the government of being unable to solidify a timeline for the cost of living consultation process.
“Today in the House of Assembly, the Minister of Home Affairs was unable to give definitive answers to questions I posed in relation to timelines on consultation on cost of living eventually saying that at the end of the year a cost of living report may be ready. That is nine months from now.
That is a considerable about of time and shows that other than more talk there is no real plan. Meanwhile, price controls on unregulated entities like grocery stores may still be the end result which has been shown to fail around the world. We continue to recommend scrapping the sugar tax which remains one of the single biggest failures of government policy.
The World Health Organization laid out seven items that needed to be in place for a sugar tax to be successful, namely
1. Retail prices on sugar drinks would need to be raised by 20 per cent or more.
2. Subsidies for fresh fruit and vegetables would need to be between 10 per cent and
30 per cent.
3. Taxing “other foods and beverages high in sugar, salt and fat” up to 50 per cent
would help to reduce obesity.
4. Earmarking revenues raised from the sugar tax for healthcare.
5. Proper monitoring and evaluation to measure the effect of the sugar tax.
6. Requiring warning labels on taxed products as an education strategy.
7. Drafting a multidisciplinary policy and implementation plan that includes advocacy
for political buy-in, monitoring and evaluation is critical.
None of this has happened and many food costs remain high. The fact is the Government can do something immediately to lower costs and chooses not to.
