If you look carefully at the charges listed on a regular ferry ticket, you will see that a great proportion of the cost is accounted for by value-added tax and third-party levies.

These levies in favor of third parties are nothing more than a further example of a serious flaw in the economic system which – as usual – consumers end up paying for. And such levies are perhaps the only factor contributing to the rising cost of living that the government can really do something about.

In the struggle to protect consumers and contain rapidly rising prices, the government should begin by first putting its own house and affairs in order.

The government has a duty to make the tax system more rational and fairer by abolishing the numerous charges levied against consumers in favor of third parties.

For there is little doubt that such levies finance nothing more than the ramshackle bureaucratic system.