HOW BENEFICIAL ARE SUBSIDIES TO MALAYSIANS

THE SUBSIDIES on the diesel and petrol fuel provided by the Malaysian government for the year 2010 was RM9.6 billion, and in 2011 it was RM15.9 billion.

Malaysians are beginning to think on how effective and beneficial from this huge amount being spent on subsidies using our tax payer’s money and from the national income. Malaysia is spending many billions Ringgits on all kind of subsidies, which includes fuel, rice, sugar, essential item and goods, plantations, fertilizers, medical etc..

The question is why we need to live under a heavily subsidized system by the government instead of a well established economy where the people can afford and at the same time maintaining a sustainable spending pattern.

A simple layman can tell you that this in the long run cannot work out. The government should look into long term plans and this should have been activated and implemented long time ago to release the country from dependence on government subsidies.

The sensible and logical way for the government to do is just to create a vibrant economy where there is high income for the people and high returns from all the sectors of industries, agriculture and others.

The good example of this can be seen in Singapore and many other countries, where their government are using less subsidies when compared to Malaysia. Singapore is a small country with no large land and no natural resource, but they need not give their people huge subsidies to make life easy and make things work.

The KK MP Hiew King Cheu commented that the subsidy system in Malaysia and particularly in Sabah, actually how much is the various subsidies had really benefited the population. We saw abuses, in balance distribution, foul play, irregular approving system, misuse, and even created problems here and there.

The fuel subsidies are common cases where the subsidies had been abused in its usage and distribution. The subsidized fuel is smuggled frequently in big quantities out of Sabah and this gives headaches and extra work to our enforcement personnel. The land transport sector did not share and benefited fully from the special fuel subsidies given out by the government, and so as the fishermen who are under the Zone C2 category.

The Malaysians are grumbling in terms of the government spending so much on the subsidies and not everyone is the beneficiary, the simple example is on the rice subsidy.

This is very high in Sabah because we have to import RM1.0 billion of rice yearly, and this is imported with heavy government subsidies. Who is the big consumer of the rice, and we all know the PTI eats a lot of our subsidized rice.

It is the government’s responsibility to look into how to cut down the expenditure on giving out subsidies and at the same time not to affect the well being of the people. A simple case is on the fuel subsidies where many billions had been spent years and why we can not build our oil refineries to refine our crude oil instead of shipping it out and buy back expensive fuel from others. (DAP Media)