Solidarity on Wednesday expressed its concern about the increasing pressure South African consumers have to bear.

This came after Statistics SA earlier released the latest consumer inflation figures, which indicated a 5.7% increase in the consumer price index (CPI) in February 2022. According to the trade union, consumers simply cannot keep up with all the price increases they have to carry and more pressure on them would have disastrous consequences. Theuns du Buisson, economics researcher at the Solidarity Research Institute (SRI), noted that the salaries of most people would have been adjusted at the beginning of the year. “Thus, the sky-high inflation we are currently experiencing has not been included in such adjustments. Moreover, fuel price inflation of 29.4% is much higher than general inflation. Employees are struggling to make ends meet as they are simply losing more and more buying power every month,” he pointed out. According to Solidarity, the latest inflation figures clearly confirmed the merit and urgency of its demand that fuel prices be left to the market and be deregulated in their entirety. The union further emphasised that the prospect of interest rates being raised by the SA reserve Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee on Thursday as “highly alarming and unjustifiable”. Du Buisson noted: “At the moment, consumers are facing the perfect storm that is having an extremely negative impact on their budgets. This must be stopped in its tracks immediately, the deregulation of all fuel prices, as well as an unchanged or even lower interest rate being a good starting point.”

• Read Solidarity’s full press statement in regard to the above at Politicsweb

Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page