KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 4 — The Keluarga Malaysia Sale Programme will begin on August 19, Special Task Force on Jihad Against Inflation Committee chairman Tan Sri Annuar Musa said.

He said the taskforce discussed and fine-tuned the modus operandi and coordinated how the tasks of five ministries involved in the programme during today’s meeting.

According to Annuar, it is expected that the Cooperatives Commission under the Entrepreneur Development and Cooperatives Ministry will begin the rollout of sales of certain products and lower prices on the same date.

"The Cooperatives Commission has identified several products during their presentation, including chicken, oil and sugar.

"There are five or six products that they have given price indications to the committee, where all the products are guaranteed to be sold at 10 to 20 per cent lower than current market prices,” he said after chairing the taskforce meeting at the Parliament Building here today.

On July 21, Annuar said the sale programme, which provides Malaysians with access to cheaper products weekly, will be held for 18 weeks till the end of the year at 639 state constituencies throughout the country.

Annuar said the Cooperatives Commission informed them of the nationwide cooperatives network and affiliated members will also be involved in processing, packaging and distributing certain products.

He said the involvement and steps taken by the Cooperatives Commission in the programme provided opportunities to those importing certain products, including sugar, and provided approval to cooperatives to conduct packing of retail sugar that was currently given to only two companies.

Annuar, who is also communications and multimedia minister, said imported sugar was currently for specific industrial use and cannot be packed and sold retail.

"So this is the first time we have given approval to cooperatives to be involved in packaging and to use the cooperatives network to sell sugar retail on the condition that prices are cheaper than what is sold now. This is specific to sugar,” he added. — Bernama