ALL parties, including consumer associations, industry players and traders, play important roles in fighting inflation, in addition to the measures and initiatives implemented by the government, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Economy) Mustapa Mohamed said.

He said the government has implemented various initiatives to curb inflation and help the people cope with the rise in cost of living.

“Inflation in Malaysia is lower due to the government’s continued provision of larger subsidy allocations of RM77.7 billion for 2022, compared to the original budget of RM31 billion,” he said in a statement today.

“The government will also bear an electricity subsidy of RM5.8 billion to maintain electricity tariffs for all consumers for the second half of 2022,” he said.

“The government implements price controls through Skim Kawalan Harga Keluarga Malaysia and Skim Kawalan Harga Musim Perayaan on items such as sugar, general purpose wheat flour, cooking oil in 1kg packets, chicken and eggs, as well as RON95 petrol and diesel,” he said.

Mustapa said the government had expanded the Jualan Murah Keluarga Malaysia (JKMM) programme involving 600 state legislative assembly constituencies nationwide and 13 parliamentary constituencies in the Federal Territories. 

“The JMKM programme is implemented from August until December 2022 to offer a reduction in the price of daily necessities by up to 20% compared to the current local market price and as much as RM80 million has been allocated to make this programme a success,” he said.

He said efforts had also been taken to strengthen enforcement at the border to control the smuggling of subsidised goods where monitoring and enforcement of 480 items at 1,500 locations across the country were carried out on a daily basis.

“Enforcement of the Price Control and Anti-Profiteering Act 2018 as well as the Competition Act 2010 has been stepped up,” he said.

According to the Department of Statistics Malaysia, the inflation rate increased 4.4% to 127.9 in July 2022 compared to 122.5 in the same month the previous year.

Meanwhile, inflation for the period from January to July 2022 increased by 2.8% compared to the same period the previous year.

Explaining further, Mustapa said the high inflation rate trend is a global phenomenon that is also experienced by many countries following the increase in production input and fuel prices.

However, he said Malaysia’s inflation rate is among the lowest in the world.

“The rate in July 2022 is lower than the United Kingdom (10.1%), the Eurozone (8.9%), the United States (8.5%) Thailand (7.6%), Singapore (7%), the Philippines (6.4%), South Korea (6.3%) and Indonesia (4.9%),” he said. – Bernama, August 29, 2022.