KUCHING, July 2 — The state government will study if further financial assistance should be provided to B40 and M40 groups affected by the high cost of goods, Sarawak Premier Tan Sri Abang Johari Openg said today.

He said the state government will have to collect the data of the affected groups before deciding.

"We also want to know what the best solutions are to help the people,” he told reporters after launching Sarawak’s First Rover Moot at the Kuching Waterfront here.

Abang Johari said the high rate of inflation is not just faced by Malaysia, but also the rest of the world due to the global economic uncertainty and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

He said the Malaysian currency is also weak and this had led to the spike in the cost of imported goods, especially food items.

The premier said there is no straightforward solution to overcoming the high cost of food items, except to have a national policy on food security.

"It is very important for us to have a commercial agriculture based on technology that will help to save costs and stabilise the prices,” he said.

"But at the moment, what the Sarawak government is doing is to increase the amount of electricity subsidies and reduce the rental on the use of government buildings,” he added.

He said the state government has already started giving a grant of RM10,000 to first-time house buyers from the B40 and M40 groups as a deposit.

"This is what we can do as the problems are very complicated. Whether we like it or not, we must find temporary solutions because based on the economic cycle, we are bound to face, within the cycle, first inflation, and then recession.

"What is happening now is that it is moving towards recession, particularly in the western economies. What we have in Malaysia are the side effects of that,” he said.