How can cost of living be handled?
Sep 05, 2011
EDITOR: The cost of living for most Ugandans has been shaped by issues to do with loadshedding, rising prices of fuel, food, communication, rent, fees, among other consumer product and services.
EDITOR: The cost of living for most Ugandans has been shaped by issues to do with loadshedding, rising prices of fuel, food, communication, rent, fees, among other consumer product and services.
These increases are aggravated by a fixed income for those employment in the formal sector.
However, those in business are still surviving by passing the burden on to the consumers through higher prices. But they cannot go on for long since there will come a time when the consumers cannot afford those prices any more. For survival, people have gone ahead to change from one job to another to earn an additional shilling or even maintain both jobs.
Others have changed their lifestyle by giving up on any form of leisure while some have parked their cars or sold the big fuel guzzlers. Some people have shifted from bigger houses to smaller ones so as to pay less rent.
Any organisation or person seeking to survive or to break even given the increasing cost of living and the fixed source of income must cut costs on one hand and increasing income on the other. However, the latter is almost impossible.
Does the Government have the will and ability to contain the economic situation whose effects are bubbling down to individual households as we speak? The Governments’ response to the ‘walk to work’ demonstrations was cutting taxes on sugar by 50% but we can all see where that landed us.
If that tax reduction had been on fuel, the multiplier effect of low transport costs coupled with affordable fuel to run power generators would have trickled down to a reduction in the cost of living.
Derek Friday
Makerere University Business School
These increases are aggravated by a fixed income for those employment in the formal sector.
However, those in business are still surviving by passing the burden on to the consumers through higher prices. But they cannot go on for long since there will come a time when the consumers cannot afford those prices any more. For survival, people have gone ahead to change from one job to another to earn an additional shilling or even maintain both jobs.
Others have changed their lifestyle by giving up on any form of leisure while some have parked their cars or sold the big fuel guzzlers. Some people have shifted from bigger houses to smaller ones so as to pay less rent.
Any organisation or person seeking to survive or to break even given the increasing cost of living and the fixed source of income must cut costs on one hand and increasing income on the other. However, the latter is almost impossible.
Does the Government have the will and ability to contain the economic situation whose effects are bubbling down to individual households as we speak? The Governments’ response to the ‘walk to work’ demonstrations was cutting taxes on sugar by 50% but we can all see where that landed us.
If that tax reduction had been on fuel, the multiplier effect of low transport costs coupled with affordable fuel to run power generators would have trickled down to a reduction in the cost of living.
Derek Friday
Makerere University Business School