Price hikes

For many people, price hikes have become the keywords in life over the past few months, as well as the next few months. It is a little puzzling, resentful and helpless.

The feelings might be particularly strong for people in Johor Bahru.

With the toll hikes at the Bangunan Sultan Iskandar Customs, Immigration and Quarantine (CIQ) Complex, Johor Baru and the Woodlands checkpoints, Singapore, all vehicles entering and exiting Johor Bahru and Singapore will have to pay higher toll charges. Take private cars for instance, compared to those days before August 1, the toll charges at both checkpoints have soared by more than 5 times, from RM5.90 to RM33. Even worse, Singapore has also increased its Vehicle Entry Permit (VEP) fee for foreign-registered cars from S$20 (about RM52) to S$35 (about RM90) per day.

The levy war has caused business of shops, hawkers, fuel stations and supermarkets to fall while public buses, factory buses, school buses, long-distance buses, taxies and lorries have either raised or about to raise fares. We can imagine the pain and frustration of Johor Bahru people.

In fact, under the wave of price hikes, not only Johor Bahru people are grumbling.

The prices of RON95 petrol and diesel fuel have been raised by 20 sen in October 1 and it is an inevitable result of the government's subsidy rationalisation effort. The so-called rationalisation requires the public to pay the price of another round of inflation and another wave of unstoppable price rising storm.

It is expected to have more new measures under the subsidy rationalisation effort. In other words, life could be more suffering for the ordinary public.

A few days ago, Land Transport Commission (SPAD) announced the decision of deregulate school bus fares and the new “flexible” fare structure would be decided based on “negotiations” between parents and bus operators.

As a result, I dare not to imagine how much school bus fares would be raised and I could only cite Federation of Malaysian School Bus Operators Association president Amali Munif Rahmat that "parents in some areas would no longer be able to bear the burden of fare hikes".

SPAD chairman Tan Sri Syed Hamid Albar said that the government decided to deregulate school bus fares as school bus operators have failed to follow the fare rates set by the authority in 2009 and parents have just paid the new fares. It is indeed an absurd logic. If the logic is acceptable, all laws could be abolished and prices of goods will not have to be controlled any more but should just let the market decide the prices.

In addition to the "market forces", the people are also worried about another the invisible powerful "hand", namely the Goods and Services Tax (GST) scheduled to be implemented in April next year.

So far, even many business operators are still not clear about the GST, let alone members of the public.

Business operators are worried that the GST might affect the people's willingness to consume, causing business to fall and profits to shrink.

Members of the public have equalised GST to price hikes and voices of discontentment could be heard everywhere even before the GST is implemented. It can hardly be imagined that if the GST really brings another wave of price hikes, how the people would react to vent their anger and discontentment? Could the BR1M assistance be powerful enough to offset the impacts and burden hitting the people?


Source: www.mysinchew.com/node/102304?tid=12