Criticism of 500,000-Toman Kalabarg Increase Amid Triple-Digit Inflation: Money Won't Even Buy a Chicken

The 500,000-toman increase in Kalabarg, amid triple-digit inflation in food products, is more absurd than meaningful. When essential vegetables like onions can no longer be found in the market for less than 100,000 tomans per kilogram, and the Kalabarg increase won't even buy a single chicken, the government cannot claim to be supporting people's livelihoods. The post "Criticism of 500,000-Toman Kalabarg Increase Amid Triple-Digit Inflation: Money Won't Even Buy a Chicken" first appeared on Safir Arjan.

According to Ambassador Arjan, with the announcement of Farakh and An to participate in the self-declaration of the "My Government" system in order to measure the capacity of people to allocate, increase or remove the amount of Kalaberg, we witnessed a disruption in this system and it was interrupted for more than a day. Although the initial deadline for this financial self-declaration, in which the property, income, car, and property of the heads of the household were asked, has ended and then extended until Friday, a lot of Iranian citizens have not yet referred to it.

According to Hassan Nowrozi (Head of Subsidy Targeting Organization) in Khabar Network's Economic Table program, despite the inclusion of this plan for 18 million heads of households, i.e. about forty million people, only about three million people have applied for registration and self-declaration in the "My Government" system!

On the other hand, Yaqub Andaish (Deputy Welfare and Economic Affairs of the Ministry of Labor) announced on Tuesday this week in the same program that in this plan, the information from the period of tenths is no longer used and only the self-declaration and verification of the self-declaration of the people with the data of the Tax Affairs Organization of the people's property is considered as the criterion for determining the position of people in one of the three groups "low scope", "medium scope" and "high scope".

This was the issue that provoked the criticism of Mohsen Zanganeh (representative of the people of Torbat Heydarieh in the parliament). Pointing to the possibility of inaccurately removing 5 million people from people who are known to have high income, he said: "It is better for the government to leave it up to the people to opt out of receiving the electronic invoice for people with higher financial means." He also emphasized in relation to the issue of replacing "extensibility" instead of "decimation": "Why is it that after spending thousands of billions of Tomans in the comprehensive Iranian welfare base in the last two decades and spending a lot of money and time in many devices for decimalization, all the information has been discarded and a new extension has been proposed?".

The time period announced for self-declaration is so short and the system is so busy that the authorities announced that self-declaration will continue until Friday; The deadline, which according to Yaqub Endaish, will be extended again.

According to the hearsays and claims, despite all the pressure from the people of the parliament, only 500 thousand tomans increase (equivalent to one million and 500 thousand tomans per person) will be paid to the poorer social groups per month as Kalaberg credit.

All these things caused a lot of criticism of this plan. Many people consider the process of self-expression as a new and failed challenge that once returned its negative answer during Ahmadinejad's era; The plan, which was solely based on the honesty of the recipients, soon turned into its opposite and was forgotten in the organization of targeting subsidies with tithing. Now we have to see if the 14th government is going to repeat the same path in a new way?

The bitter irony of implementing an unsuccessful idea

Alireza Heydari (economic expert and vice president of the union of veterans of the labor community) explained in a conversation with ILNA regarding the distribution of the electronic bill of exchange and the plan to increase it through self-declaration: the beginning of the payment of the bill of one million tomans in January of last year was, in fact, the payment of compensation for the change in the prices of imported basic goods (such as livestock inputs) after the removal of the preferential currency.

He added: The government's claim was that we will give this one million tomans to all sections of the society so that all those who bought at the prices caused by the preferential currency will not suffer from the change in the exchange rate. The philosophy was that people could again have the power to buy basic goods despite the sharp rise in prices after the removal of the preferred currency. Therefore, the purpose of the electronic catalog was not to create justice, change the structure of tithes, and redistribute wealth, and it was supposed to return to them in a different form, from the government's profit from the high currency, what was taken from the people.

This economic expert, referring to the contents raised by the officials of the Kalaberg plan regarding the elimination of a part of the Kalaberg buyers, continued: The government claimed that, for example, when it buys chemical fertilizer for the farmer with preferential currency, this cheap fertilizer does not reach the farmer and it is smuggled again at a higher rate before consumption. For this reason, the nature of the payment voucher is not the redistribution of resources, and for this reason, we cannot give the right that we got from all sections of the society to only some and exclude others. If the whole story was that money is in the hands of the government and it is supposed to be distributed on the basis of justice and with the aim of preserving the power of the weak sections of the society, i.e. poverty alleviation, then definitely a huge number of people receiving the goods should have been removed and only the very weak groups covered by relief institutions and all people below the poverty line would have received it; But the purpose of distribution of goods was to compensate for the high price of goods after the high currency; So it should be everyone and no one should be excluded in the middle.

Heidari continued, referring to the method of distinguishing and obtaining financial self-declaration from households, and emphasized: the question should be raised, where in the world is household information collected, especially in the economic sector, based on self-declaration and complete trust in the head of the subsidy recipient?

He clarified: It seems that the decision to present a self-declaration form was made with the aim of removing a much smaller number of people or protesting. If a person provides false information in order to be entitled to receive the cargo amount, it is a harm that will occur. This method is not common in any country in the world. If the criterion is only self-declaration, maybe the government will have to give an increase of 500,000 tomans to 100% of the applicants and not exclude anyone.

The vice-president of the union of veterans of the labor community noted that the officials said that the tax affairs organization checks and verifies the information provided in the self-declaration is also one of those strange things. If the information of the tax affairs organization was complete like the comprehensive Iranian welfare database, this amount of protest would not have been formed. The information situation of the Tax Affairs Organization is also not very good. The access of the tax affairs organization to the correct economic information of individuals and households is far less than that of Iranians' welfare base.

This economic expert further explained: The issue is that if the information of the tax affairs organization is the criterion, those whose information is accessible and who have a salaried job, may be placed in the ninth decile from the fourth or fifth decile, and those who have inaccessible information in freelance jobs, instead of the ninth decile, come in the third and fourth decile. We continue to have a major problem with identifying demographic groups financially because many devices do not share their information with regulatory agencies, and this problem is not likely to be resolved anytime soon. Anyone who enters the My Government system will see that some of their new financial information is not included in the system. In such a situation, it will be more preferred that if a person has added a car, property, or income, he should not enter in the system. This is while some may deny their previous property.

In the end, referring to the price increase, he said: the increase of 500,000 tomans, despite the three-digit inflation of food products, is more ridiculous than real. In a situation where essential vegetables such as onions are no longer available in the market for less than 100,000 tomans per kilo, and the increase in commodity prices is not even the price of a chicken, the government cannot claim to support people's livelihood.