Price Stabilization Meeting

Government Works to Stabilize Prices and People’s Livelihood

Deputy Prime Minister Kyungho CHOO presided over the Price Stabilization Meeting[1] on September 19 to examine sectoral issues regarding prices and discuss countermeasures.    

The following is a summary of DPM Choo’s opening remarks.

Although consumer price hike has recently slowed in August along with stabilization of global oil and grain prices, inflationary pressure persists in the economy as the prices of agricultural products and processed foods have continued to rise.

Inflation is projected to be tamed no later than October provided that the situation does not deteriorate further, but the government needs to stay vigilant and closely monitor the price trends as recent price increases in some sectors could weigh more on people’s livelihood and increase price volatility.

The government will focus on keeping prices in check by devising policies tailored to each sector as follows.

Agricultural products

To tame the prices of agricultural products which have recently seen a continuous rise, the government will make utmost efforts to manage the supply and demand until October when autumn kimchi cabbage and radish begin to be released to the market.

- Release kimchi cabbage that is grown in a contract farming scheme funded by the government early before its complete growing and import 600 tons of cabbage allocated for making Kimchi for export purpose earlier than originally planned (early October → late September)

- Devise measures to stabilize the supply and demand of main ingredients for Kimchi during October ahead of the Kimjang season in early November

Food

- Led by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, monitor food price trends on a daily basis and work actively on negotiation with the food industry to stabilize food prices

- Request that the processed food industry minimizes price increases by increasing productivity

Energy

- Rapidly prepare plans to respond to the increased volatility to ensure that the energy prices would keep stable, reacting against the future uncertainty

- Extend the termination period of fuel subsidies linked to diesel prices to the end of the year from late September to reduce the burden on the transport and logistics industries

Public utility charges

- Work hard to stably manage public utility charges in the second half of this year by closely cooperating with local governments

Unfair competition prevention

- Led by Fair Trade Commission, the government will make joint efforts to detect unfair competition such as price fixing in each sector to prevent unjust price increase

The government will also thoroughly reexamine the effectiveness of current policy tasks such as tariff reductions and support for ingredient purchases and take additional measures to promote it if necessary. Moreover, it will continuously identify and implement new policy tasks for price stabilization with a view to reducing people’s hardships.