Can anyone update me as to when this silent price increase of the very basic foodstuffs such as wholemeal bread has been allowed to be jacked up in it’s steadily climbing price per loaf?
Did Shahrir Samad, the new Minister for Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs approve this price hike of something so basic from RM2.70 per loaf of wholemeal bread to shoot up 30 sens in one leap to now retailing at RM3.00 per loaf?
Where is the logic of increasing the price of bread by 30 sens per loaf when the price increase for flour is about the same per kilogram?
Serves Malaysians right for continuing to return the irresponsible idiots of the BN back into power after more than half a century of being fleeced and squeezed out of every sen and ringgit that we can be ripped off by these crooks in power?
I long for the day when these scoundrels will be voted out of power!
To all Malaysians, when will you ever learn not to vote for these robbers who smile like the sly devils that they are and continue to slit our throats and empty our wallets faster than a speeding bullet?
Will Malaysians forever be doomed to be deaf, dumb and blind to the BN’s atrocities?
Is it any wonder that the culprits are termed as BN the ‘Kerajaan Barang Naik?’
May justice prevail in this land one day and the BN thieving crooks sent to the gaols! Amen.
Reality however tells me that in Malaysia, it is the people who continue to suffer like hell while the bloody buggers enjoy themselves living in opulence in palaces like Seri Perdana and play golf day in, day out at the expense of the unfortunate but idiotic taxpayers who at every General Election never fail to continue voting for the BN @#$%^&*!
Soay siow ey lang! Grrrrrrrr!
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BN,,,,
I hope badawi hasten up the CHANGE!!!
Much as I am for PR, to blame the BN for price increase is really way off!
Right now, almost all food-related
ingredients have seen massive jump in prices and there will be no respite in the continuing rise of prices.
My family (not me!) is in the business of importing raw food ingredients business and they get almost daily notifications of price increases from their suppliers world-wide!!! These include all the wheat/rice/agricultural/dairy-based products.
In Malaysia, only the most basic plain white flour / basic white breads are subsidised and are price-controlled – while the rest of the other specialist flours and breads are at world market prices! The price increases have been incredible for these range of products!
Another example is butter (milk/cheese, for that matter) – the price of butter have tripled/quadrupled – so much so that transport of butter are now accompanied by security guards!
One example you used is MILO. Raw materials used in the production of MILO are cocoa, sugar, milk, barley/rice, etc. Just check the price jump for each of the products and you can see why MILO also shot up in prices!!
In recent years, vast acreage of farmland in the big food producing countries (especially US, Europe and Brazil) have been converted from food production to the production of alternative energy (ethanol, etc) for cars, etc. Malaysia benefitted from the increase in the price of crude oil but now have to pay much more for the food products previous produced cheaply by US, etc.
The world is now paying the price of global industrialisation and the massive “upliftment” of the many previously poor families into middle-class families.
There is nothing the BN or the PR can do to mitigate the looming food crisis!
While I wouldn’t solely blame the Barang Naik kerajaan for our current inflation woes, I would blame them for not improving our income levels to compensate for such high inflation.
Inflationary pressures in the world has been increasing over the last 3 years. It is not a new thing. However, the government does have some leeway in mitigating the effects.
Firstly, there must be comprehensive strategies on how to uplift the incomes of the poor and the lower-middle-class who bear the brunt of this disease. It does not take a genius to realize that we are quite lacking in this area. And, the decades of mismanagement by the Barang Naik government has only made this worse.
Secondly, although the government has little control over prices of most things, they can mitigate by lowering income taxes (and various other taxes like quit rent, assessment, road tax, etc). They can also mitigate by relooking at the exhorbitant and one-sided privatization deals now plaguing the country.
Thirdly, for the poor, there should be food stamps or something in that manner. This is a more targetted subsidy for those who really need it.
Fourthly, since the government needs additional monies to cover the costs of these (hopefully temporary) subsidies and tax cuts, it would be prudent to cut unnecessary spending. For example, our defense budget is obviously bloated beyond what is needed for our security needs. After all, who is going to invade us?
Fifth, another way to reduce government expenditures is to cut the number of civil servants. By comparing with other countries, it is beyond doubt that our civil service is also bloated, if measured against per capita figures. The savings can then be targetted for subsidizing the poor.
I know that prices of raw foods are increasing all over the world but the way food prices are being raised here in Malaysia practically every now and then shows that the BN authorities do not really bother to monitor the unscrupulous ones who hoard basic commodities and spark off an artificial shortage such as the preposterous cooking oil shortage we experienced a couple of months before?
A palm oil exporting country such as ours going short on cooking oil!
Then we have the petroleum price hikes in a petroleum exporting country?
We do not grow wheat, that is so very clear yet surely the bakeries do not have to hike up the prices so rapidly like the unannounced increase in the wholemeal bread I am cross about?
Well, at the end of the day, when prices shoot up, so will the people’s emotions and tempers!
Artificially induced food shortages and price manipulation can just boomerang back and cause havoc in our society.
Just brace yourselves to the repercussions from it.
FYI, the import price of wholemeal bread flour more than doubled in the last six months …. any ideas on how the bakeries can keep the same price and yet survive?
There is no price increase for basic white bread but we do pay to keep the price lower – an increasing proportion of our tax money now goes to subsidise white bread and leave less money for development!
As for cooking oil – the fact is that the price of edible oil has increase by leap and bounds – and the government (BN or PR) have to pay the producers at increasing prices for the crude palm oil which is then processed and then sold at a subsidised price to the consumers. Again we are using our tax money!
Food/Petrol subsidy is a kind of vicious circles – it just does not work!
For cars, we should just drop the petrol subsidy and not charge road tax for cars under 1599 cc. Any cars above 1599 cc should be taxed at a exponential rate!
Same for food subsidies – give tax rebates and/or food subsidy to low incomes groups and let the market rule the prices!
Prices of everything should be left to the market force. We should not blame the govt for the rising prices. Even during the time of the Prophet saw, he refused to control the prices of goods even when some companions appealed for him to do so.
The subsidies saved should be used for some other useful purposes like infrastructure developments. But the people are angry because the money saved from subsidies are wasted on over priced projects and to enrich the select few.
If those money are used wisely, peoples’s incomes will rise and can offset the worlwide price increase.