JOHOR BARU, June 29 — The federal government should prioritise systematic planning to ease the financial burdens of Malaysians in the current economic downturn, Johor PKR chief Syed Ibrahim Syed Noh said today.
The Ledang MP said that in a crisis, the country needs a wise government to manage the direction, administration and problems well.
"The government's approach and measures in addressing the issue of commodity prices are very disappointing.
"Warnings of a commodity price crisis have been predicted by financial experts and others, looking at the state of the global economy and the supply of goods involved,” he said on his Facebook page.
He was responding to Malaysia’s current economic situation where the country is going through a challenging period due to higher inflation, which translates to increasing food prices and living costs.
The Opposition lawmaker accused the federal government of "playing" around subsidies and ceiling prices on goods at a critical time, which made markets messy and negatively impacted the end consumer instead.
"For a while it was announced that there was a subsidy, then there was no subsidy. The abolition of subsidies was first announced, then later withdrawn. Similarly, the ceiling price was introduced before it changed to a variable ceiling price.
"The weak government and its policies will leave a huge impact on the people as their buying and spending power cannot be well planned.
"Traders and suppliers have to change prices frequently. In fact, the situation will get worse if left unchecked,” he said.
Syed Ibrahim urged the government to focus on properly identifying the causes of volatile commodity prices such as global price increases and problems at the supplier level so systematic solutions can be applied.
"Accurate and systematic solutions, covering short, medium and long term planning need to be drafted and presented to the people.
"For example, if the root cause of the chicken price issue comes from the feed that has to be imported, then local feed production efforts need to be intensified,” said Syed Ibrahim.
He also supported the creation of a goods stockpile as suggested by his party deputy president Rafizi Ramli as a buffer, should supply suffer further.
