BL Premium reports that Cosatu has again weighed in on the rising cost of living and has called on the SA Reserve Bank (SARB) to ease rate increases and play a prominent role in addressing the country’s socioeconomic challenges.

On 25 May, the SARB raised the repo rate by another 50 basis points to 8.25%, the highest since 2009. The move saw the prime interest rate, which commercial banks use to lend to customers, rising to 11.75%. Cosatu general secretary Solly Phetoe, in a briefing after Thursday’s three-day central executive committee (CEC), said the federation was concerned by the rising cost of living, a stubbornly high 32.9% unemployment rate and entrenched poverty. Interventions were needed to cushion the poor, including increasing the R350 special relief dispensation (SRD) grant to at least R620 and extending it together with the presidential youth employment intervention programme beyond 2024. Phetoe said Cosatu would be ramping up campaigns to help protect the working class from the rising cost of living and poverty, including engaging the SARB “to ease the excessively reckless and suffocating increases in the repo rate”. The government needed to reduce taxes that constitute 28% of the fuel levy as “the fastest and most effective way to reduce food and transport and other key goods’ prices and thus providing relief to millions and the economy,” Cosatu’s president Zingiswa Losi said. Cosatu will embark on a national day of action on 6 July in defence of collective bargaining and against government corruption, the energy crisis and “exorbitant interest rates”.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Luyolo Mkentane at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)

Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page