I held a press conference in my office today to call on the government to further reduce the price of petrol for Malaysian consumers. The oil prices went down as low as USD55 a barrel yesterday - the lowest in 22 months. The government has announced that it will review the oil prices every fortnight and the next review should be tomorrow, 15 November. And we want them to keep to their promise, if not Sharir Samad
will get a earful next Tuesday during the committee stage debate for his ministry.
Finance Minister 1 Najib Razak has mentioned that we will be lucky to have 3.5% economic growth next year given the current volatile global economic situation. That means the economy will slowdown and income level of ordinary Malaysians will surely be static if not reduced. Therefore, one important strategy the government must employ is to control inflation. To control inflation, prices at the pump must be south-bound.
The pump prices in Singapore today is SGD 1.686 per litre for RON95 and SGD 1.433 per liter for Diesel. If you compare RM1-SGD1 as equal (cox the salary level in Singapore is higher than ours), the cost of fuel is more affordable for Singaporeans than ours even though we are an oil producing country while Singapore is an importer.
For Thailand, RON95 is 21.09 baht per litre (less than RM2). That is cheaper than Malaysia.
The government must reduce the pump prices accordingly and we should be paying not more than RM1.80 per litre today given the low prices in the international market. And the government need not subsidize our petrol anymore at this price although they have promised a subsidy of 30 cents per litre during the fuel hike.
We should applaud Air Asia for withdrawing the fuel surcharge for passengers as the drop in the oil prices have been passed to the benefits of the passengers. Perhaps, Nor Mohamad Yaakop should learn a thing or two from Tony Fernandez! .
Friday, November 14, 2008
Petrol prices should be reduced further!
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9 comments:
I used to spend RM2+ for breakfast. When price of petrol went up,so did the cost of my daily morning roti canai & teh tarik. Fair enough. Now that the price of petrol has gone down, I'm still paying the same amount of money for my daily morning sustenance. What's wrong with this picture? We say the govt is has been irresponsible in hiking up the petrol prices but in actual fact the traders, food operators, business owners, etc, they are the irresponsible ones. I say boycott these greedy lot. Now, YB, here's something that I'd love to see you fight for...
eg: beofre oil price hike 1 piece of roti canai used to cost RM0.80 after price hike it now cost RM0.90
even if oil price drops back to pre crisis levels , food operators is unlikely to revert back to the old price of RM0.80 and who knows in future say 10-15 yrs down the road , 1 pc of roti canai (plain)may cost us RM1.50 ????
i think the petrol price will not decrease down to RM 1.92 . the gov ec to increase the price of petrol, now there already decrease the price 3 times also cant until RM 1.92 . I heard from the radio, the petrol price at USA already start increase back, is it the petrol price at Malaysia also follow to increase ??????
Gov , fast increase the price from RM 1.92 to RM 2.75
Please fast to decrease the price, help !!!!!!!!
difficult to say whether malaysian govt will follow US's moves to increase the price here as well ,
for now price of crude stands around USD 56-57 per barrel , therefore in the shortterm basis there's no reason to increase the local petrol price further.
Maybe Govt. did not hear us well.
PRU 13 make your vote count.
Register yourself Generation X and Generation Y of Malaysians.
Dear YB ,
1) Although Air Asia withdraw the fuel surcharge , it may not necessary translate to cheaper air tickets for travellers. Other costs eg: administration charge or the air ticket charges may go up a little to compensate for withdrawal of fuel surcharge ???
2) I agree with your assumption comparison of RM1 is equivalent to SGD1 , based on your point let me illustrate an example:
eg: today 1 plate of chicken rice cost SGD2.50 , however in M'sia JB , one plate will cost us RM3.50
the difference is 1.00
(RM3.50-SGD2.50)=1.00
if we convert it to Singapore $ terms & in the eyes of foreigners , its a mere SGD1.50 based on exchange rate of (SGD1=RM2.36)they will say our cost of living is much more cheaper than singapore. however the chicken rice portion , there will be a difference.
Dear YB ,
to stress further on point number 2 , do not forget that our malaysian currencies had depreciated greatly against world major currencies eg: before the financial crisis happened in yr 1997-1998 , RM2.30-RM2.50 could fetch us USD1.00 , now it cost us roughly RM3.60 for USD1.00
therefore whatever we import from overseas we malaysians will pay a hgiher price than our singaporean counterparts.
Thank You
Regards
O.PLUS
"time value of money"
inflation rate had outpaced savings & fixed deposit interest rates.
value of currency had devalued therefore we pay more for our imports.
corruption is another factor which drives up costs , created more unnecessary red tapes hence nation becomes very uncompetitive.
legislation sounds good on paper however enforcement wise is pretty lax & lousy.
ha ha price reduction by a mere 15sen , just a piece of our hair ,
gd for vehicle users lah.....but price of essential items will hardly ever come down much lah.....one time raise the price by hefty 78 sen all damages been done already can't overturn it already.......
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