The Petaling Jaya Utara MP referred to his statement yesterday where he had called for the government to explain how it arrived at the increase, with international crude oil prices having fallen slightly in the month of January and the ringgit not being any worse against the US dollar compared with two months ago.
“Instead of giving clarity on how the government arrived at a painful 20 sen hike for petrol prices for the month, the BN Strategic Communications Team issued a lengthy statement which only served to obfuscate the matter,” Pua said, adding that Malaysians deserved a straightforward answer.
The DAP national publicity secretary also took issue with the lack of answers from any proper government authority.
“Instead of receiving any response from any responsible minister, much less the finance minister and prime minister, we got a reply from the ‘BN Strategic Communications Team’.
“We don’t know who they are, or even know what is their capacity to respond on behalf of the government.”
The price of RON95 and RON97 prices went up by 20 sen to RM2.30 (up 9.5%) and RM2.60 (8.3%) respectively, while diesel cost went up by 10 sen to RM2.15 (4.9%).
This follows from the already big hike Malaysians have experienced since the start of January, when RON95 increased by 20 sen while RON97 went up by 15 sen.
Pua said the statement from the BN team also failed to provide any clarity on how the government arrived at the 20 sen quantum in the hike.
“If they could write such a lengthy essay to rebut my simple question, why couldn’t they just attach the spreadsheet to justify the increase?
“They just said that pump prices were calculated from the average refined oil prices as measured by the ‘Singapore Means of Platts’ (MOPS), which is already a widely-acknowledged fact,” he said.
Accusing the BN team of giving “statistics with a fuzzy range of numbers, instead of just providing the specifics”, Pua said he decided to do them a favour and came up with the calculation on how to arrive at the petrol price.
“The average MOPS95 price for December 2016 is US$66.553 per barrel or US$0.4186 per litre. That works out to RM1.8753 per litre at the then exchange rate of US$1:RM4.48.
“MOPS95 averaged slightly higher at US$68.820 per barrel or US$0.4328 per litre in January. In turn, it translates to RM1.9130 per litre (US$1:RM4.42).
“Hence, based on the exact explanation provided by the BN Strategic Communications Team, the difference in price is only 3.8 sen more for January,” Pua said, again questioning the justification for the government to increase the price of RON95 and RON97 by 20 sen.
He reiterated his call for the finance ministry to disclose if Putrajaya was actually imposing hidden taxes on the consumers to cover up for the government’s budget shortfalls.