PERIKATAN Nasional (PN) is launching its own version of cheap sales – Gerai Prihatin Nasional – to help the people with the rising cost of food items, coalition chairman Muhyiddin Yassin said.

PN will have the help of its supreme council member, Dr Ronald Kiandee, who is agriculture and food industries minister, he added.

“As PN chairman, I have decided that we should launch the Gerai Prihatin Rakyat initiative to sell daily essential items at cheaper prices around the country.

“Dr Ronald, who is a PN supreme council member and Bersatu vice-president, and who is also Agriculture and Food Industries Minister, had been tasked with heading a national level committee to launch Gerai Prihatin Rakyat,” Muhyiddin, who is also Bersatu president, said in a statement today issued in his capacity as National Recovery Council chairman.

Muhyiddin was also formerly prime minister before being replaced by Ismail Sabri Yaakob in August.

PN’s initiative appears to run parallel with a similar programme by Ismail’s government, called Keluarga Malaysia Sales, also aimed at offering consumers cheaper essential items in view of the spike in prices of food, especially vegetables, in recent weeks.

On Tuesday, Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister Alexander Nanta Linggi announced the twice-monthly Keluarga Malaysia Sales to help people cope with rising living costs.

The dates of the sale, he said, will be announced soon, but it will begin on December 4 in all 222 parliamentary constituencies.

Additionally, enforcement officers will also conduct price checks on 1,500 outlets selling essential goods, he told the Dewan Rakyat.  

Prices of vegetables have increased by up to 200% in recent weeks, with farmers attributing the problem to a combination of factors, including labour shortages, more costly raw materials, climate change, and logistics and global supply chain disruptions. – December 2, 2021.