Ionita: The government Is Trying to “Put Out the Flames” of Tariff Growth with Cash Infusions

On the air of the Interview of the Week program, Veaceslav Ionita, an expert in economics, said that according to a survey conducted, more than 50% of citizens said that paying for gas at new tariffs had become a problem for them. The economist believes that the government is trying to cope with the growth of tariffs by infusing cash, and its volume amounted to about 6 billion lei, reports a-tv.md “In November, before the gas price has increased, payments were at the level of 95%. When we have December figures, we will see how much people have adapted to the new prices. IDIS “Viitorul” made a survey on whether people will be able to pay the gas tariff. A small part of the citizens said they could, about 20-25% said that this price increase affected them, but they can handle it, and more than 50% said that it’s going to be a problem for them,” Ionita said. “Of these poor, the wealthier ones stated they would have to give up holidays, which they usually spent in Ukraine, in Zatoka. The rest of the people said they would have to give up buying clothes, and, worst of all, buying food. And that’s the real problem. The authorities are trying to stop the process, and the entire volume of cash infusions in order to “put out” this price increase amounted to about 6 billion lei. That’s a lot. The authorities are trying to somehow cope with this,” the economist said. “Where did these 6 billion come from? I’ll explain. 2.7 billion lei were supposed to be allocated to pensioners to increase the minimum pension in order to somehow preserve their solvency. Another 1.6 billion were supposed to be paid to Energocom so that the tariff would not be raised even earlier, in order to free people from the burden in November-December. And another 1.7 billion lei were supposed to be paid for subventions to the population. That is, the authorities are trying to put out the blaze with cash infusions,” Veaceslav Ionita stressed. Point