CHP’s economic staff will knock on Minister Şimşek’s door! Here are the topics on the table

After President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s return visit to CHP, CHP leader Özgür Özel announced that 3 economic staff from his party would meet with Treasury and Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek. The date of the meeting and the topics on the table were revealed.

President Erdoğan’s visit to CHP after 18 years and his meeting with CHP Chairman Özel continues to be a hot topic in the political arena. While it is known that the main agenda of the meeting between the two leaders was the economy, CHP leader Özel announced that 3 economic leaders from his party would meet with the Minister of Treasury and Finance Şimşek.

CRITICAL MEETING ON JUNE 24

It was learned that Selin Sayek Böke, Yalçın Karatepe and Volkan Demir will be among the CHP economic staff members who will meet with Minister Şimşek at the meeting to be held on June 24.

THE MINISTER OF THE SHADOW CABINET EXPLAINED ARTICLE BY ARTICLE

Yalçın Karatepe, Deputy Chairman of the Ministry of Treasury and Finance in the Shadow Cabinet of the CHP and writer of BirGün newspaper, who is in the delegation to meet with Minister Şimşek, explained the issues of the meeting in an article he wrote to a newspaper today.

In his article, CHP’s Karatepe said, “We, as CHP, express at every opportunity and on every platform that the program being implemented is wrong, imposes a heavy burden on citizens, and deepens impoverishment. We will have the opportunity to express these directly in our meeting with Minister Şimşek. I mean “We do not have a hidden agenda, whatever the citizens’ agenda, problems and demands are, those issues are on our agenda.” said.

Here are the topics included in Karatepe’s article and the topics that will be discussed in the meeting:

MINIMUM WAGE INCREASE

“1) We do not accept the government’s statements that the minimum wage should not be increased in the second half of the year, in a period when inflation is high. We will state that keeping the minimum wage, which remains 2 thousand liras below the announced hunger line as of May, constant until the end of the year will lead to serious real impoverishment of wage earners and demand this increase.

PENSION PAYMENTS

2) We will say that pensions are insufficient and that they need to be seriously increased, especially through root pensions. We will state that the limited increase will not be sufficient due to the unrealistic inflation data announced by TÜİK and that an increase above this should be made.

FARMER’S BASE PRICES

3) We will state that the agricultural base prices announced so far, such as wheat and tea, are very low, are not even enough to cover the farmers’ costs, and cause great grievances. While we demand that base prices be determined at a level that will not cause farmers to suffer, we will say that agricultural supports must not be less than 1 percent of the national income, as ordered in the Agricultural Law. We will state that during the AKP rule, this level of support was not provided, despite the law, and only one-fifth of it was provided. We will ask them too.

4) We will say that there should be transparency in the data announced by TURKSTAT, especially inflation data. We will ask how TÜİK, which stated that we do not have price data for the products in the item basket, calculates inflation with non-existent data. A statement was made yesterday that we do not have a price, but we do have an average price. They don’t even disclose those average prices.

BUILD-OPERATE-TRANSFER PROJECTS

5) Bridges, roads, hospitals, etc. through Public Private Partnerships (PPP) contracts. While the work was being done, President Erdoğan said ‘not a penny will come out of our pocket’. However, as we said at the time and as the whole public now knows, billions of dollars are being paid from the budget. These projects include rent, guarantee payments, etc. We will demand that they share the payments made under their names with the public in a transparent manner. We will also state that PPP projects should be put on the table again and the contracts should be updated to reveal the public benefit.

TRANSPARENCY IN PUBLIC PROCUREMENTS

6) We will demand the removal of around 200 changes in the Public Procurement Law in the last 20 years, which increase the government’s ability to intervene in tender processes, and changes that will ensure that tenders are competitive in the public interest.

IMPROVEMENT OF TAX SYSTEM

7) We will explain how to make the tax system fair, so that more tax is collected from those who earn more and almost no tax is collected from those who earn less, and how this can be done.

REQUEST FOR REDUCTION OF VAT-SCT

8) Today, we will demand that the share of indirect taxes such as VAT and SCT in total tax revenues is very high (around 65 percent), and that this should be reduced to the OECD average and the tax burden on citizens should be reduced. Let’s give a concrete example: We will demand that the 30 percent tax collected under the names of KKDF and BSMV on the interest paid on loans used by tens of millions of our citizens, especially low-income citizens, such as credit cards and additional accounts (KMH), be reset to zero.

INCOME DISTRIBUTION INEQUALITY

9) We will explain the deterioration in income distribution, the fact that the majority of the population is becoming poor, and how we can reverse this.

WEALTH FUND LIQUIDATION

10) “We will demand that the Wealth Fund be liquidated and all transactions carried out there be included within the scope of the budget, allowing for the Court of Accounts audit.”

CHP’s Karatepe wrote his article, listing it item by item, saying, “We will express to Minister Şimşek the issues that continue like this and are the real agenda of the citizens. I mean, whatever the agenda of our citizens is, ours is the same. We have no other agenda.” He finished with his statements: