KUALA LUMPUR, 28 Oct: Opposition Leader, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim questioned the move by Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak to deliberately hide the rising prices of cooking oil and chose to publicly announce cuts in sugar subsidies.
He also questioned the move because palm oil production is currently surging and the people are shocked by the sugar price hike.
Anwar dais that he wondered why Najib is ‘shy’ to announce the increase in price of cooking oil that will be faced due to a reduction of subsidies worth RM505 million, the same as the reduction on sugar subsidies in the National Budget 2014 speech on 25 October.
“Why did the government choose to reduce subsidies and hide the effects of the subsidy reduction of cooking oil. At the current situation, when the production of crude palm oil in the world is at the highest rate,” said Anwar in the Budget 2014 debate speech here at Parliament today.
Anwar also questioned the central government’s move to not choose to allocate palm oil (CPO) subsidies for each household.
“For example, Indonesia provides two litres of CPO for each household, as well as biofuel subsidies. Why does Malaysia not carry out the initiative seeing that the price of cooking oil will increase,” he said.
Anwar, who is also the Member of Parliament for Permatang Pauh, said the impact of the reduction of sugar subsidies by 34cents will result in gains to the two sugar companies, Malaysian Sugar Manufacturing and Central Sugar, to 20 to 25 percent, which is RM1 billion a year, due to the strengthening of the company’s monopoly.
He said the subsidy reduction allows for corporate companies to double their profit bit the people are burdened by the increase of sugar prices.
“The profit before tax if the companies are around nine percent with the gross income of the industry of RM4 billion, and with the subsidy reduction, it will rise to 20 to 25 percent. It is clear that the ones losing and who continue to be burdened is the people and instead, corporate companies continue to be babied and protected by the government,” he said.