President Luis Abinader affirmed that demagogy cannot replace reality and that more food can now be bought with a minimum wage than in 2011.
Below we reproduce the full part of the speech of accountability, where the president addresses this issue.
Some young economist friends sent me a proposal for a new index to be introduced in the country’s political-economic discussions, making an analogy with the famous “Big Mac Index” from The Economist magazine, in reference to the McDonald’s hamburger, which compares the purchasing power between currencies of different countries. His proposal is to measure the purchasing power of the Dominican minimum wage at different points in time and they have called it: the “Index Chicken”.
These curious young men calculated that, with today’s average minimum wage, which is 16,262.50 pesosdivided by an average price of 83 pesos per pound of chicken for Dominican workers they can buy 196 pounds with their wages.
However, if we do the same calculation for 2011: RD$7,583 pesos of salary divided by 55 pesos the pound of the chicken of the time would buy only 138 pounds.
In other words, Dominican workers today can purchase 58 pounds of chicken more than in 2011 with their minimum wage, 42 percent more.
And if we do the same calculation with rice it would be 59 percent more, and beans 29 percent more.
That is why demagogy cannot replace reality: The big conclusion is that with today’s minimum wage you can consume more food than with the 2011.
And I hope they will dare to calculate the “Banana Index”.