Shafie Apdal said basic necessities price is reasonable

We have a lot of clueless ministers here in Malaysia. But this particular one, who goes by the name Datuk Mohd Shafie Apdal, minister of  Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs, gets a special mention today. You can read the Harian Metro article to get background first.

According to him, apparently basic necessities price such as bread, milk, sugar, coffee, etc. in Malaysia is:

• under control, (of course, except for the periodic increase due to demand from the manufacturers and wholesalers...)
• never goes up, (next year is the general election ok, so enforcement officers are everywhere to ensure "correct" prices are used. Just wait till March 2008)
• and is going down. (what a whole bull dung of lie).

Malaysian ministers have this habit of comparing similar price from other countries. They conveniently said highway toll is cheaper in Malaysia compared to Singapore, petrol is cheaper in Malaysia compared to Brunei, and so on.

Is it? How about doing proper purchasing power parity (PPP) to equalize purchasing power between these countries instead? For example, using the Big Mac Index, implied PPP in Malaysia is 1.71 while Singapore is 1.12 to the US dollar. And Malaysia per-capita income is USD 12,100 while Singapore is USD 28,100 in 2005. Assume monthly toll price is USD50 for both Malaysia and Singapore. Our across causeway neighbor only spend 2.1% of their income for toll, while we Malaysian spend 4.9% just to pay the toll. Not so cheap anymore, isn't it?

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