THE task of tackling cost of living rests on getting better inter-ministry coordination and buy-in from traders, said Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail.
Just 10 days into his new role, the Kulim Bandar Baharu MP acknowledged that his ministry alone cannot bring down the cost of living.
“When the electricity tariff hike was announced recently by the Energy Commission, it created a bad perception on the commitment to reduce the cost of living. And later, we found out that the hike can be postponed and does not even affect most domestic users,” Saifuddin told The Malaysian Insight.
Factors that affect the prices of food, utilities, housing, education, health and transport contribute towards cost of living, he said.
As such, he said, to reduce the cost of living, one of his biggest challenges is to coordinate with other ministries.
The second challenge for him is to educate consumers and persuade traders to lower prices in tandem with lower costs.
He said it’s generally true that eateries that raised prices last year may not lower it this year even though there are more subsidies or other costs are brought down.
Saifuddin said his ministry recently did a study comparing 10,000 fast-food restaurants and Indian-Muslim restaurants and found that some 30% of the complaints were related to the latter.
The study found that more Indian-Muslim eateries maintained or increased their prices compared with fast-food restaurants.
“We can fine them but it’s not a long-term solution. As such, our enforcement personnel try to convince and educate them about the benefits of lowering their prices in tandem with lower costs.”
According to the PKR secretary-general, more than 60% of his ministry’s personnel are in the enforcement units.
But this is a work in progress, he said.
“When I spoke to some of the traders in Kedah, they admitted that business has improved after the goods and services tax had been zero-rated. But price reduction has been slow.
According to him, Malaysia’s food imports for 2017 was RM51 billion while its exports were only RM31 billion.
One of the ways, Saifuddin said, the ministry is doing is to educate consumers on their rights.
While controlling prices is one of the main tasks of his ministry, Saifuddin is also reviewing certain monopolies from the previous administration.
“Monopolies are not necessarily bad but uncontrolled monopolies may result in more expensive or lower quality of service for consumers.”
Using MyEG as an example, he said the company had a monopoly for online foreign workers’ permit (PLKS).
“The firm used to provide only one insurance option for the foreign workers and this has curtailed other industry players and gave limited choices to these workers. Our task is to check on these kinds of monopoly and step in to ensure the companies give better service or lower costs to consumers.
“In the end, it’s about crafting polices to benefit the end user,” he said. – July 13, 2018.
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