KUALA LUMPUR, April 25 (NNN-Bernama): Malaysia, like many other countries, cannot escape from the global phenomena of rising prices of food and other products.
Director-General of the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) Dr Mahani Zainal Abidin said that what was happening now were structural and fundamental changes related to production and demand.
She said Malaysia managed to keep the price level and the Consumer Price Index (CPI) low due to the subsidy given by the government and also the price control on various food items.
"But the question is how far we can maintain this...we cannot escape from this international phenomena (of rising prices)," she said at a public seminar entitled "Rising Prices and People's Welfare: Current Measures and Future Steps" by ISIS, here Friday.
Mahani also commented on calls for the government to reduce the petrol price, on the basis that Malaysia is an exporter of oil and, as such, benefited from the high price of oil in the global market.
She said Malaysia could not be compared to other oil producing countries like Kuwait which had oil reserves for more than 100 years or Saudi Arabia which also had huge reserves to last many more years.
On the other side, Mahani said that Malaysia, despite its current status as an oil-exporting nation, would be a net importer of oil by 2011 and a net importer of gas by 2018.
Mahani said even many of the oil producing countries in the world were not providing price subsidy for petroleum purchased by the people.
The Federation of Malaysian Consumers Associations (Fomca) CEO and secretary general Muhammad Sha'ani Abdullah said that the government should increase spending on areas like education, housing and healthcare to help more poor and lower income people due to rising prices of many goods and services.
He said the people could not understand why university education was so costly in this country.
According to Muhammad Sha'ani the government should also review the concession agreement with toll operators because the people felt that the current toll charges were too high and `eating into their pocket'.
He said the government should also convince the people that figures being released like the CPI figures were truly reflective of the market.
On food security, he said focus should also be given on helping small farmers to produce more, adding that despite the government's calls for more private sector investment in the agriculture sector to increase food production, not much progress had been achieved so far as companies were more interested in areas like palm oil plantation.
-NNN-BERNAMA
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