Isamaa leader calls for government 'tax truce'
Isamaa chair Urmas Reinsalu has called on the Reform-SDE-Eesti 200 government to call a truce on tax hikes, adding that the administration has failed to analyze the impact of its actions on the Estonian people and economy, turning it into a country where both taxes and prices are high.
Reinsalu made his remarks at a party board meeting held in Jõgeva on Saturday.
He said: "The new government is the same old government of tax rises."
"Estonia is being molded by the government's political agenda into a land of both high prices and high taxes."
The government's strategic approach is wrong, he went on. "The priority has to be economic recovery. To do this, a tax truce is necessary, not a tax war."
Reinsalu said that as early as January, the previous administration, which consisted of the same three parties, had misjudged the impact of its tax hikes on the cost of living, leading to the deepest economic recession EU-wide.
He also rejected government claims that the problem is the same across the entire region. "This is false," Reinsalu added.
"In Latvia and Lithuania, the bank even predicts a price fall this year, but in Estonia, thanks mainly to the tax rises, a price rise," he continued, referring to an April report by Luminor Pank which said that Estonia is the only Baltic country where the economy is not growing, and prices are rising.
Whereas Lithuania and Latvia will have 2-percent and 1.2-percent growth rates respectively in the coming year, for Estonia, the forecast is for a 1-percent contraction, Luminor said.
--
Follow ERR News on Facebook and Twitter and never miss an update!
Editor: Andrew Whyte, Aleksander Krjukov
