As time progresses the cost of living in any country is bound to rise. The issue is – how fast and how much.



The obscene rise in the cost of living is so obvious one can notice that RM100 today buys far less compared to just last year. We all know already that the Malaysian Consumer Price Index is nothing but the king’s fool.

A staff of mine, who recently returned from Penang after Chinese New Year, gave a very current example of price escalation. A packet of fried noodle in a morning market increased from RM2.00 to RM2.50 over the week. That is even more expensive than that sold at a Kuala Lumpur morning market.

Some people may argue that the fault is with indiscriminate operators but I understand that basic food prices have ballooned over the past year even after oil prices stopped increasing.

One example out of many: a kilogramme of onions shot up from RM2 a kg to a whopping RM5 over the year. This has forced many food & beverage operators to either increase prices or water down the quality and quantity of servings.

To make things even worse, the highly questionable GST has risen from 5% to 6% this year.

It is undeniable that the fuel hike is the catalyst. What fueled the increase of price for other controlled food items like sugar then? Why is our government lamenting that it cannot afford to subsidise anymore?

If the economy is doing quite alright compared with the rest of Southeast Asia, why is our national reserve running so low that the government has to slash subsidies and impose the GST? Evidence has already been unearthed of misuse and mismanagement of funds … by the billions.

A report revealed on the Majlis Perbandaran Seberang Perai (MPSP) finances from year 2000 to 2010 spoke volumes. Two years ago, the MPSP was suffering losses from RM5 million to a whopping RM40 million. Within a few years of being taken over by Pakatan Rakyat, it turned around to RM54 million in surplus in 2010.

The Global Anti-Corruption watchdog, Transparency International (TI), praised the Penang state for its anti corruptions efforts. TI estimated that Malaysia suffers RM10 billion in losses from corruption per year. It could actually be more.

TI also revealed that the Penang state government managed to save nearly 12% of the 2008 Penang state budget of RM 36 million from operating expenditure. In fact, it is the first Malaysian state government to implement a truly open tender system for government procurement and contracts.

I rest my case. With uncorrupted management of funds and government agencies, we should be able to avoid the domino effect that’s bleeding many Malaysians dry.