By KINIBIZ
Yesterday Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak urged traders to be fair to consumers by reducing the prices of their goods given that fuel prices have fallen. In the same breath he advised consumers to bring market forces to bear on recalcitrant traders by refusing to buy from those who do not offer reasonable prices.
This is all fine and well. But the prime minister should take his own advice and be fair to all Malaysians by lowering electricity tariffs too.
Recall that during the Budget 2015 revision last month, the prime minister announced that there would not be any electricity tariff hikes this year.
This was reiterated by Energy, Green Technology and Water Minister Maximus Ongkili earlier this week, who said the scheduled tariff increase last year was skipped.
But lower fuel prices as well as falling coal prices globally had been great news for Tenaga Nasional, who are seeing lower costs to generate power as well as higher tariffs boost its margins.
This also means that we are hardly going to see an electricity tariff hike this year anyway, meaning the prime minister’s announcement was a non-event.
The idea of a six-monthly electricity tariff hike review as previously announced was to allow any cost increase or savings to be passed back to consumers. Yet when will the recent savings, expected by analysts to be RM310 million in the first six months of the year alone, be passed back?
The decision lies with Putrajaya as far as electricity tariffs go and the prime minister should walk the talk if he wants prices to come down. (Well-intentioned Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin should talk to the prime minister instead of calling for Tenaga to lower tariffs.)
In any case, here are some of our best stories, news and analyses this week for you to catch up on:
Pick 1 — Feng shui outlook 2015. The year of the wood goat reportedly began this week and it is likely to be tough for businesses, said a feng shui expert KiniBiz talked to. The real challenge will be to get consumers to open their wallets. And will the recent plunge in oil prices in turn dampen Malaysia’s feng shui? Read all about it here and here.
Pick 2 — 1MDB opens up. In a first, self-styled strategic development company 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) responded to KiniBiz, answering 10 out of 21 questions sent. However newly minted chief Arul Kanda Kandasamy misses the mark on several counts. Read what 1MDB has to say as well as KiniBiz’s response here and here.
Pick 3 — Tong Kooi Ong, Ringgit and Jho Low. The strange controversy of rumours and accusations surrounding Edge Group owner Tong Kooi Ong intensified further yesterday. The businessman issued a statement saying that he had served a cease-and-desist legal letter to tycoon Low Taek Jho or Jho Low, believing that the letter is responsible for the malicious blog postings against him. Read more about this here and here.
Pick 4 — GST and property. Less than two months to go until the goods and services tax (GST) kick in beginning April 1, Moody’s Investors Service expects the tax to dampen residential property sales this year, tipping buyers to adopt a wait-and-see approach. Sentiment aside, however, local industry players say the actual impact of GST on costs and prices is being overstated. Read on here and here.
Pick 5 — Using competition to bring down prices. There has been much ado about who should lower prices now that oil is much cheaper and how this should be done. But race shouldn’t play into it since we have enough instruments at hand to cut through the rhetoric and actually get it done, argues our resident cat here.
Pick 6 — Will reliance on Indonesian coal end well for us? For all the talk about renewable energy, Malaysia is pretty much dependent on coal for energy and half of what we burn for power comes from Indonesia. But the republic will inevitably cut exports going forward, which doesn’t bode well for us, argues our resident cat. Read here.
Pick 7 — The ECB and its critics. After all this time, the European Central Bank or ECB has finally decided to embark on a quantitative easing programme and much noise have followed. These range from baseless to speculative yet few actually point to real problems, argues Jean Pisani-Ferry, academic and the French government’s commissioner-general for policy planning. Read more here.
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— Khairie Hisyam Aliman, Assistant News Editor
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