Center for Public Integrity (CIP) economist Estrela Charles considered this Monday that "annual food inflation" exceeded 10% in the country and should have been the reference in the new minimum wages and not the average annual inflation, which stood at around 7%.

"Food inflation is between 10% and 11% and the minimum wage has increased between 3% and 4%, which means it is far short of what it should be, at least to cover the rise in food prices," said Estrela Charles, an economist and researcher at the Center for Public Integrity (CIP), speaking to Lusa.

For the researcher, the criterion that guided the approval of the new salaries at the beginning of this year is the accumulated annual inflation, which was between 6% and 6.7% and included all the products in the consumer's basic food basket.

Estrela Charles stressed that the increases in the lowest salaries enacted earlier this month do not restore workers' purchasing power.

He pointed to the case of a 371 metical hike for one of the lowest paid sectors, noting that it does not "keep up," for example, with recent increases of more than 500 meticais in rice and cooking oil.

To Lusa, the researcher also stressed that the situation of the workers is even more precarious since they have had no increase in wages in the last two years, due to the fall in the economy, caused by the covid-19 pandemic, the impact of climate change and armed violence in the province of Cabo Delgado.

The government and companies, he continued, are in a position to increase minimum wages, because the economy is coming out of the recession of the last two years, which, in his view, can be seen by the increase in the supply of jobs.

Estrela Charles accused the executive and employers of "lack of interest" in paying better minimum wages and strengthening workers' purchasing power

"Employers will always tend to set wages lower and lower so that they can make higher profits," he said.

For its part, he continued, the government has been reluctant to approve substantial minimum wages, because several members of the executive are also employers.

"Much of the business sector in the country is made up of some members of the government. There is a conflict of interest and the workers are isolated in this negotiation process," he said.

"The fact that the unions have demanded a minimum wage of 30,000 meticais and the government has set the lowest wage paid in the country at just over five thousand meticais shows that the workers' representatives were forced into this consensus, because the difference is about 25,000 meticais," concluded Estrela Charles.