By Sin Chew Daily
The agony that accompanied an unexpected rise in petrol prices did have a negative impact on the otherwise jovial festive mood during this Chinese New Year celebration.
To make things worse, it was only the start of more bad things to come.
Indeed, the pain and burden that comes with higher petrol prices will only get worse.
It has been anticipated that petrol prices will rise again over the next two to three months due to the strength of international crude oil prices.
While some are still observing this development, many others have already taken the preemptive step of raising the prices of their goods or charges of their services.
Higher petrol prices will have a lot of repercussions in the country’s economy. Some businesses are already complaining about increased cost and squeezed margin, making it almost inevitable that consumers will eventually bear the brunt of it.
As a matter of fact, when the government began implementing the managed float mechanism to determine petrol prices in December 2014, we should have been mentally prepared for increased financial burden one day as a result of high oil prices, given the fact that crude oil prices fluctuate all the time and will never stay at a low level forever.
Malaysians now cherish the good old days of fuel subsidies. But, we can and must never bring back the old way.
The fuel subsidy policy will add a lot of financial burden to the government and will distort the all-important demand-supply message of the market, resulting in unnecessary waste of resources.
Owing to lax enforcement and supervision, smuggling activities could become rampant. In the end, Malaysians’ hard-earned tax money will be siphoned into the pockets of irresponsible quarters.
Market-oriented pricing mechanism is basically a move in the right direction, and the “pain” we are now feeling is just the price we have to pay for the erstwhile “low oil” good time.
Thanks to the government’s subsidy programme, petrol prices have remained low for so long. Our lifestyles, along with companies’ modus operandi, have evolved largely around such a basis.
After the government decided to abolish fuel subsidies and allow petrol prices to float freely, our activities built over the decades on unrealistically low oil prices will come under assault.
The thing is, such a policy change is right, and since we are unable to logically criticize the authorities for a twist of fate, we can only dig into the government’s faults from the enforcement perspectives.
As we endure the hardships of higher petrol prices now, perhaps we should also learn one or two lessons from it. Inappropriate policies must be reversed at all costs, and must never be compromised just because of short-term benefits without taking into consideration its long-term impact.
The unjustified “good time” we are now enjoying could very likely turn into something that we will have to pay for sometime in the future.
As we savour various irrational subsidies and “political candies”, we should realise that there is no free lunch under the sun, and we are bound to pay a price for it some day.
Sin Chew Daily is a local vernacular publication
With a firm belief in freedom of expression and without prejudice, FMT tries its best to share reliable content from third parties. Such articles are strictly the writer’s (or organisation’s) personal opinion. FMT does not necessarily endorse the views or opinions given by any third party content provider.