Latest: Pump prices will be reduced by 10-20 sen from Wednesday
Isn’t it about time local fuel prices are lowered in line with global prices? After all, we haven’t seen much improvement in our public transport with all those government subsidies we were supposed to have saved, have we?
With global prices now down to US$80-85/barrel, our policy planners should reduce prices to ease the effect on the lower income group. A 20-sen reduction would be reasonable for now, bearing in mind that global prices could fall to a more realistic range of US$60-80 in view of the likely slump in global demand.
It was a blunder to have raised the price so drastically in the first place, when all the signs were that the recent price uptrend was the result of excessive speculation.
With this, is it too much to expect that prices of other essentials will be brought down?
Says blog reader Joe Rakyat:
How come the prices of staple goods like bread, rice and oil have not gone down yet? Petrol price has already gone down to $84? RM3 for a loaf of wholewheat bread — why so expensive?
If the fuel price goes down, will we see a drop in electricity tariffs? Or would they want to make even more profits?
And what about airlines and budget airlines? Shouldn’t they consider slashing their fuel surcharges? But then again, they may now have now become environmentally conscious and their fuel surcharges are actually their way of trying to discourage the public from air travel (which contributes to global warming)! More likely though, they probably believe that what goes up (including their profits) should rarely come down.
Any savings in fuel costs which are passed on to the public will help to stimulate domestic demand and cushion us a little from the global financial meltdown.
On a related note, the government’s fuel price review mechanism itself needs to be reviewed! The price review was supposed to be done on the first of every month, right?
In the long run, we should serious do more research into renewable energy – and I am thinking of solar – not nuclear – energy.
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Anil, as leader of example they increase the rice price first so they should reduce the price of rice before asking other to do so.
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