*taken from www.chedet.com

The price of crude oil has increased by 400 percent in the last three years. It follows that the price of products must increase, sooner or later. In other countries petrol prices had already increased. In the United Kingdom one litre of petrol sells for more than one pound sterling or RM7. In the United States it is about RM5.
That the price in neighbouring countries has gone up is shown by the rush to fill up by Thai and to a lesser extent Singapore vehicles.

The Government has now announced an increase in petrol price by 78 sen to RM2.70 per litre, an increase of more than 40 per cent.

I may be mistaken but there seems to be less vehicles on the road today. But obviously that is not all that will happen. All other consumer goods, services and luxury goods would increase in price.

The cost of living must go up. Put another way there will be inflation and the standard of living will go down.

Obviously our increase in petrol price is far less than in the United Kingdom or the United States. But our per capita income is about one-third of theirs. In purchasing power terms our increase is more than in the UK or the US.

The increase hurts but the pain is greater not just because of the increase percentage-wise is higher than in developed countries but because of the manner the increase is made.

A few days ago the Government decided to ban sale of petrol to foreign cars. It flipped. Now foreign cars can buy again. Flopped.

Knowing that in a few days it was going to raise the price and foreigners would be allowed to buy, why cannot the Government just wait instead of banning and unbanning.