CDS-PP chairman Nuno Melo this Sunday challenged the prime minister to cut VAT on essential products “temporarily at zero” and create an agri-food sector regulator.
“With food inflation above 15%, we challenge António Costa to temporarily reduce VAT on essential products to zero,” said the center leader in the closing speech of the CDS Staff School, which has been taking place in Espinho since Thursday.
Citing that “the state has already raised more than 5,000 million euros in extraordinary income until May”, Nuno Melo considered it revenue “necessarily perverse, because of inflation and at the expense of the absurd sacrifice of taxpayers and Portuguese families”.
“It is immoral that the state is collecting millionaires’ profits every day because of inflation and the sacrifice of Portuguese families,” he insisted.
Another proposal from the chairman of the CDS-PP was the creation of a regulatory body for the agri-food sector: “We challenge the Prime Minister to create a regulatory body for the sector, which will bring balance and fairness in product prices , [cujo preço ao produtor está] hitherto crushed in the mechanisms of the relationship between producers, intermediaries and distributors,” he insisted.
Nuno Melo stressed that “the lowest prices in the European Union are charged in Portugal”, Nuno Melo said that “producers are desperate to survive and are not closing doors”.
In his speech, the centrist leader also criticized the health minister’s resignation to hand over the diploma governing the new executive leadership of the National Health Service (SNS).
“For the CDS, it is not acceptable that the replacement of the Minister of Health is not going quickly and it is less acceptable that Marta Temido can complete the process of presenting the diploma regulating the new executive direction of the SNS to the Council of Ministers ” , he said.
Source: DN
