What is worrisome is that nobody seems to be mentioning the Fuel Price Formula. Badawi clearly mentioned it on television. If so, why is the Domestic Trade Minister, Shahrir Abdul Samad, pledging that the fuel price at the pump will not go up for some time to come? Perhaps, he also means it will not go down either. That seems to be against the formula announced by Dato Seri Badawi.
Effective June 5 2008, the fuel price at the pump is to be reviewed monthly to be 0.30 sen less than the market price per liter. The market price today is RM3.00 per liter which gives us RM2.70 per liter at the pump for the next one month after the 0.30 sen discount.
The principle of 0.30 sen per liter discount stays. I talking about petrol price. This means if the market price of fuel goes down to RM2.90 by July 5, the price at the pump after the 0.30 sen discount will be RM2.60 per liter. If the market price of fuel goes up to RM3.10 per liter by July 5, motorists will have to pay RM2.80 per liter at the pump after the discount of 0.30 sen.
The principle must be accepted. What we can dispute is the 0.30 sen discount per liter. Maybe it should be 0.50 sen per liter. Discount (or subsidy) means taxes foregone by the government.
Don't focus on the fuel price at the pump going up from RM1.92 to RM2.70 per liter. Focus on the formula for fuel prices. Modern countries, for example, reviews the fuel price at the pump weekly. In short, there is no reason for traders to raise prices unless they want the consumers to boycott them.
Meanwhile, the government has announced some cost-cutting measures to save RM$ 2 billion a year. More are to be announced. All these measures sound like the same stupid austerity drive measures that former Tun Mahathir Mohammad announced when he became Prime Minister in 1981 and sent the economy into a recession. Cutting government spending will affect businesses which are dependent on such spending.
How? This surely reflects the poor state of public transportation and is not something to be proud of. Focus also on the poor state of the public transportation and the fact that most cars on the road have only one person inside it.
Another related issue, Dato Seri Anwar Ibrahim now claims that he will revert, when he takes over of course, to the previous fuel oil prices. If he fails to do so, he says, he will resign immediately as prime minister.
In the run-up to the March 8 general elections and in its aftermath, Dato Seri Anwar promised the oil-producing states of Terengganu, Sabah and Sarawak that he would increase up their current royalty of 5 percent to 20 percent, and at one stage even 40 per cent, if and when when his Opposition Alliance was to seize the reins of power from embattled Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's mortally wounded Barisan Nasional coalition.
How Dato Seri Anwar would manage the 20 percent pledge is a mystery?.
Edition1/07
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