Pour Less Sugar On Me...

I return to one of my earlier series that explores the relationship of subsidies with marginal economics of essential products and its consumption in Malaysia, the 'cooking oil' series. However, as there is a variation in the product focussed on, being sugar, I've chosen to alude to a completely different set of artists to Shakespeare for the title of this piece... and I only chose Def Leppard as it seems to fit one of their hits... no hidden agenda... and of course, I like their music!

Yesterday, one of my favourite NGOs, the Consumer Association of Penang (CAP), made the news again when they chose to go to press on the issue of Malaysians being among the highest, if not the highest, consumers of sugar in the world; 26 teaspoons of sugar a day! The CAP then urged the authorities to address this through education and legislation, whilst showcasing the direct and indirect medical implications of such high sugar consumption by Malaysians, such as:

1. Malaysia having the fourth highest number of diabetics in Asia which was expected to increase by more than 60% to 1.3 million in 2010.


2. ~72% of 16 million Malaysian adults are sick with a non-communicable disease like diabetes, hypertension or cancer.


3. Malaysia having the most overweight and obese people in Asia; ~54% of the adult population!

I wish to add a tangent to the lobby against sugar related more to economics though. Why is sugar consumption in Malaysia so high? I believe it is partly to do with the price of sugar, seeing as it is a controlled item, which is hence subsidised by the government! The proliferation of sugar hence is not just due to Malaysians having sweet teeth, but because as a bearer of taste, sugar is a cheap option to fulfill the demands of our discerning food-obsessed nation!

Subsidies on sugar presents a dis-economy in many ways, for not only does it boost the consumption of sugar based on an artificial demand-price trade-off, but as sugar or its raw materials are IMPORTED, there is no real benefit of its low prices to the greater economy! Sugar, unlike rice, is a luxury that is so non-essential that any increase in price leading to a consumption drop may not even result in a balancing consumption of other goods... people just consume less!

So, besides creating tycoons from these subsidised businesses, the only 'gain' to the Rakyat from low sugar prices, hence appears to be a frequently pursued transitional feel-good effect related to enjoying sweet stuff cheaply, probably as often as we can afford to! And the result healthwise...

I had expressed in an earlier posting of the need to abolish altogether the subsidies on sugar and the economics were directly related to health, as:

1. The relationship between high sugar intake and poor Malaysian health presents a link between sugar subsidies with poor worker productivity from absence or ineffective work due to illness. The direct economic impact of sugar subsidies on said reduction on national productivity would require a university thesis to quantify, but the link should be clear to us even now.


2. The direct impact of poor health of the populace would be an increased burden, and cost, on our healthcare system and infrastructure. Effectively, the cost is related not just to higher dispensation of drugs (hypertension pills, insulin, etc) and medical services, but also generally a higher cost to insure the health and death of Malaysian citizens as a whole even by public agencies and corporations.


3. The caring for the ill is still a very personal activity in Malaysia. As the number of those in need increase, the burden upon the healthy productive members of society will result in secondary inefficiencies that will further penalise the economy. Confusing? Well, imagine a working mum having to take time off to attend counselling of an obese child. Imagine the dad then being hospitalised for hypertension. Will the working mum remain working?


4. A generally less healthy populace results in the older generation being more ill and less productive at earlier age. For example, politicians are still considered young and sprightly in Japan at the age of 60, but in Malaysia, even at 55 some are labeled old! OK, politicians are perhaps not the best examples of productivity, but no one can deny the national shame at losing Yasmin Ahmad to stroke at the young age of 51!

The straight-line negative economic impact of sugar subsidies can hence be represented in the following chain (I'll chart it up nicely some other time):

Sugar Subsidies -> Higher Sugar Consumption (-ve economic impact from higher sugar imports) -> Poorer Health of Populace (-ve economic impact from poor productivity) -> Higher Healthcare Costs (-ve economic impact from avoidable increased cost of Health) -> Higher Insurance Costs (-ve economic impact from cost of Health cover) -> More Time Spent Caring for Ill (-ve impact from removal of productive workers to act as carers of the ill) -> Older Members Of Populace Relatively Less Productive (-ve impact on economic potential of population above 50 years of age)

So, whilst in theory potentially unpopular, the government should remove the sugar subsidies above all else. It makes sense in terms of ensuring better long-term health of the populace by effectively increasing the cost of getting ill from high sugar consumption. Hopefully I have also made a convincing argument as to the economic merit of removing the subsidy, not just because sugar is imported, but due to the real cost to our economy of the poor health it engenders.

Cry Havoc! And Let Loose Some Half-Measures To Patch Our Food Supply Chain...

The Lah-ist government of Malaysia is in a state of sheer panic. Well masked behind a veil of Oxford woven civility for sure, but in panic they remain. Symptoms of this panic include laying bare a raft of half measures to patch up the holes in the country's food supply chain.

I suppose for them to panic is natural. I mean, as opposed to the 'shortages' of luxuries of the recent past such as salt, sugar and cooking oil in the local market, the government recently had to sort out the shortage of a staple - flour - and are now confronted with a 'worldwide supply crisis' of rice, THE staple.

Very much like English fooballers at a World Cup, the various cabinet members must be thoroughly sick of the complaints and worries being expressed by their Wives And Girlfriends (WAGs) on the rice shortage issue. For in the end, admit it, we Malaysians are a creative enough people to be able to live without salt (got soy sauce), sugar (got cinnamon and 'tebu') or (palm oil based) cooking oil (use less, more expensive brand like Mazola or just cook with Planta), but rice?

The last time we had a rice shortage in these parts was during the Japanese Occupation of the 1940's, and then our mummys and grandads had to survive on ubi kayu... UBI KAYU!

Enough already, I ramble too much, so what are my specific grouses about the government's current plans? Here we go again...

1. The plan entails massive growing of padi so the country will be able to self-reliant on rice. Huh? Hello Mr PM, it takes 4-6 MONTHS for Padi to grow to maturity, how is this going to help a rice problem that is happening NOW! Look, I know its hard, but just FOOOCUUUSSS...
2. There is talk of massive planting of padi and other key agricultural crops in Sarawak. Hah! So which tranche of rain-forest is the government planning to rape this time with this padi-planting scheme! The logging companies must be smacking their lips and starting up their padi-planting subsidiaries already...
3. The government is planning to build warehouses and other facilities to stockpile food. Stockpile food? You can't even get sufficient rice supplies and you're talking about stockpiling? And we're talking about food like rice here, that eventually spoils with time? And what about pest control? And keeping the food fresh? Isn't this going to take up a lot of resources? So...
4. Pak Lah announced that all this will take an RM 4 BILLION program to implement. RM 4 BILLION! Ala Pak Lah, please lah don't embarass UMNO members any more by using our mother's inability to buy rice as an excuse to make those close to you rich. It's your brother Ibrahim and son Kamal right that's in the food business?

Oops... sorry, but getting personal there... well we are talking about RICE here! When in truth, securing a good supply of rice for Malaysians, even in the current tight supply situation, is not THAT difficult. So, some ideas from my non-Oxford mind?

1. I presented some ideas at the end of this posting of mine on how tweaking the subsidies system a little may help in terms of the pricing mechanism: http://thoughtsintangents.blogspot.com/2008/04/forget-about-cooking-oil-rice-rice-my.html
2. Government could secure rice supplies from producing countries as a inter-government deal (G2G), perhaps as a swap with one of our exports, such as Palm Oil. The government can then channel the supply, or indeed perform the actual purchases via GLCs or government agencies and coops with retail businesses (such as Tescos, Pasaraya Peladang, etc). Hold one, I recall a former PM used this idea once before...
3. The government should run a campaign to shift consumption away from rice dependency. This will be hard as the pressure on food supply is affecting all types of foods, though at different times, so the shift will be for Malaysians consider a dynamic diet with no single staple, partly driven by economics and availablity of food supply. Not pleasant, but a potential future reality to prepare for.

It is a tough new world Malaysians are facing, so we need leadership that can make tough choices and convince us to support these measures. So please lah Pak Lah and co, give us real solutions to real problems, not half-measures from half-understood situations... else step aside so someone more competent may lead us.

Forget About Cooking Oil... Rice, Rice, My Common Cents For Some Rice!

We return today to one of my favourite topics... the integrity of our nation's food supply chain, or lack thereof, on the back of a historic price control mechanism for selected food items that has lacked salt, been under cooked and was nigh close to being de-floured of late...

We begin our story with the arrival of the new Minister of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Dato' Shahrir Samad, into office, suspicious that he's been sent to the ministry to ensure his political doom since his predecessor got moved to a more junior ministry, probably because of these events:
http://thoughtsintangents.blogspot.com/search/label/cooking%20oil

Being an ex-banker, having an MBA from IMD, experience as Welfare Minister in the 1980's, being linked by marriage to an influential JB business taukeh family and of course being a blogger (!) seems to have made Dato' Shahrir better prepared than his predecessor. The new minister quickly engaged businesses and the media on the need to look at the whole price control thing.

Unfortunately, just as he was starting to feel some warmth on his seat, the shortage of rice worldwide hit the headlines. This linked article is illustrative as to how the problem is complex, whilst again, not being quite real...

http://www.independent-bangladesh.com/200802212190/business/worldwide-shortage-of-rice-shoots-prices-soaring.html

In the meantime, our old man from the kampung, Pak Tam, is still wincing from the verbal barbs he's been getting from his wife up till last week. It was bad enough after they did the hoarding of cooking oil during the cooking oil 'shortage'...

Back in January, soon after they had secured some 60kg of Mazola from the local kedai runcit, topped up by 20kg of Minyak Cap Kerja which they 'luckily' found being sold 'at a bargain' when they decided to 'scout' for supplies in the next kampung at the height of the cooking oil 'crisis', Pak Tam was alerted of the coming shortage of flour, again from his kedai kopi circle.

Pak Tam rushed home to get his wife so they could secure flour supply. After a brief argument over the fact that they already had no space left in the pantry as it was full of cooking oil, and that they don't use much flour anyway outside of Hari Raya, they rushed directly to the Gigantic mall in town as Pak Tam was sure flour supply at the local kedai runcit must have completely run out.

Much to his horror, upon entering Gigantic, they were greeted with the view of piles and piles of cooking oil bottles of the cheap Palm Oil based Minyak Cap Kerja variety... Mak Tam's favourite brand as it was SO much CHEAPER than the non-Palm Oil brands, such as Mazola! They also saw witnessed an argument between the lady manager and the cooking oil delivery man about how MORE cooking oil was coming than the hypermart can store!

Mak Tam's restraint only lasted until Pak Tam started the car engine; they bought a modest 5kg of flour - Pak Tam couldn't take more as Mak Tam was giving him the silent treatment and glared lightning bolts whenever he reached for an extra packet. Thunder then came in a symphony of abuse, critique, sobbing, shrieking, historical baggage and genetic observation over the whole 20 minutes drive back home - a masterpiece of anger unsuitable for polite company!

Pak Tam continued to suffer for the remainder of the month, but thought all was over by February.

Unfortunately, his brother-in-law Pak Bakaq, the retired civil servant, came for a visit during election weekend and just had to show off how he had been quoted by a paper for correctly stating that the January cooking oil saga was not a 'crisis' but just a general panic based on no common sense. Of course the Bakaq family then had a good laugh at the Tam family's own undimished cooking oil stockpile! Mak Tam was angry for a good 3 weeks after that!

And now Pak Tam is hearing things about rice. Of course, he dare not say anything to Mak Tam now, despite his kedai kopi gang continuing to disbelieve the Pak Lah media assurances that the rice shortage will not hit Malaysia...

Back at his Ministry, Shahrir is still enjoying the relief from the 4th floor boys being too busy to 'advise' him on the price controls thing, what with the boys focusing on 'helping' Pak Lah fight for political survival. Nevertheless, to survive the on-going political storm, Shahrir has to be seen to be doing something now... well, this blogger would like him to consider the following.

How much do the cooking oil and sugar subsidies really cost Malaysians? The honest truth is, no one really knows. There are elements in the equation that are indirect and require further assessment, for instance:

1. How much does the reduced price from the subsidies result in increased consumption of these goods, hence an overall higher subsidy costs.
2. How much have the resulting increased consumption of dangerous subsidised 'luxuries' like oil and sugar aversely affected the health of Malaysians, resulting in increased medical costs per capita? The National Kidney Foundation will inform you that the majority of kidney failures in Malaysia is associated with diabetes (high sugar) or hyper-tension (from consumption of fats, including oils), statistically among the highest in the world!
3. How much is guaranteeing a profit to the resultant monopolies of controlled goods in Malaysia via the price control mechanism worth it to these firms. For instance, in the case of Sugar, Robert Kuok is not known as the 'Sugar King' for no reason. How much has a guaranteed profit from these subsidies helped the Kuoks establish their family empire spanning the globe?

These economic sums are not difficult to establish, but does need effort and application to assess. Once they are assessed, Shahrir, if he is indeed a worthy minister should be able to sell the following policy changes such as these:

1. Abolishing subsidies and price controls for food items that are really luxuries, such as sugar and cooking oil. These are bad for the health of Malaysians when consumed in excess, whilst not really adding that much more to taste - very important to us Malaysians. These subsidies are also making the rich tycoons richer by protecting the Malaysian market from competition whilst making the supply chain hard to sustain in periods of volatility.
2. With savings resulting from the above abolishing of subsidies, as well as longer term savings on health costs, etc, the government may be able to continue supporting subsidies for staple food items such as rice and flour. Rice especially is worthy of subsidies both for strategically ensuring supply security locally and to support farmers that remain on the poverty line.
3. With the abolition of price controls over luxury food items, there may be other savings also due to the government, such as in enforcement and monitoring of these subsidies specifically. Why not channel some of these and the less transparent medical savings to better agricultural approaches to our farmers and a better food supply chain for staple foods in Malaysia?

Such efforts would make much more common sense than the reactive behaviours of the government over the last 4 years, especially that of the last 6 months!

Much Ado About Cooking Oil

There is a Shakespearean tangent to emphasise here, the 'much ado about nothing'-ness around the cooking oil saga.

The hero of the hour on the cooking oil crisis, just as for the salt crisis, should be Datuk Shafie Apdal, the of late oft embattled Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister. Here is the man in charge of not simply the to-and-fro-ing of local trade affairs, but also key 'vote-sensitive' items, such as the price control policy for food items.

The price control policy around food items is not just a key vote winner/loser because we 'holier than thou' Malaysians wish to keep food costs low for the lower income earners. It is important because we Malaysians are a nation of eaters! Yes, that's right, we may be of different races, religions and socio-political backgrounds. We may be nationalists, liberalist, religionist, socialist and dare I say some still communist. But transcending all this, WE MALAYSIANS MUST HAVE OUR FOOD!

Now food is not just a simple necessity for us to live. I mean, what's the point of living if there is no good food around! Malaysian students from various countries in Europe, Oceania, the Middle East, the Americas, don't often discuss their academic results when they call home, but MUST asssure their mothers that they are not suffering too much from the lack of good and proper tasting Malaysian food... and that the microwaved corn-dog they are eating is OK....

So when Datuk Shafie Apdal heard about the cooking oil 'shortage', one would expect him to react as any Malaysian would - he probably panicked! And this so soon after the salt crisis! One can just imagine the concerns popping into his head:

• Oh god, what will my wife say! We had a tiff already when I couldn't get her salt the last time!
• Does this mean we will have to cancel our kenduri this weekend? Oh my god, will the hotels have to start cancelling wedding functions?
• Aiya, do I dare even have lunch at the 'Maple' later? I may be pestered by the 'Kuey Teow Special' guy...
• Man, will they still keep me after the elections... Chinese New Year's coming... Chinese votes!

Seized with the horror of this last thought, Shafie decided he had to inform the PM. He was lucky, Pak Lah was in the office and had just had his nap... he was at his best! Pak Lah probably had a quick response for Datuk Shafie as he happened to have a whole floor of Oxbridge and other young graduate types to refer to for solutions and he reassured Shafie...

• This was a good thing, as it would stop people actively being Holier Than Thou about Chua Soi Lek.
• Shafie's ministry should confirm whether this cooking oil 'shortage' is real or just a rumour.
• Shafie should immediately suggest measures - it seems a PPE graduate from Oxford recalled rationing as a good measure to manage shortages of goods by Winston Churchill's cabinet during World War II. As this idea was recalled by an Oxford 1/3 economist, Pak Lah suggests Shafie apply this measure.
• In the meantime, the PM recalled a meeting the next day to discuss Palm Oil Industry where Shafie is involved. As in Pak Lah's mind Palm Oil and Cooking Oil is about the same, he thought it a perfect occassion to discuss and resolve the crisis. Peter Chin, Primary Industries Minister, he is sure would understand that this was a national crisis!
• Some Machiavelli on the 4th floor then suggests that the DPM be 'tested' with this issue too... but by this time, Shafie had signed off...

Shafie was much calmed by the call and was able to think critically for the first time. He thought it was a little difficult to implement this rationing thing as he doesn't really know how to enforce it! However, it now has the PM's endorsement, so he'll carry on with it anyway to keep Pak Lah happy. He then called up his ministry's chief secretary (KSU) to begin 'confirming' this rumour...

Meanwhile, at Tescoes Hypermart Taman Tin Doc Mail, the floor manager on duty was puzzling over why consumers, led by an earlier hoard of workers wearing the uniform of a GLC where a young family member of Pak Tam's worked (see http://thoughtsintangents.blogspot.com/2008/01/cooking-oil-cooking-oil-where-art-thou.html), were buying cooking oil as if it were petrol the day before a fuel subsidy cut. He was about to call his wife when he received a call from someone in the Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry, asking him whether he was suffering from a 'shortage' in cooking oil.

Now, this floor manager was a good company man. So, after finishing his 1/2 hour gossip with the ministry official, where he learned more about this 'shortage', he then calmly called HQ and informed them of 'intel' from the Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry of a cooking oil shortage, confirmed by strange behaviour of a hoard of staff from a Palm Oil related GLC! Being a good hubby, he then called his wife, who happened to be floor manager at Gigantic Hypermart...

By the end of the day, Shafie was ready and confidently declared to the media that 'rationing' of cooking oil will be the 'temporary solution', until supplies of cooking oil are brought in.

Seeing all this in the news, Pak Ya, a retired civil servant, decided to have some fun. He and his wife went down to Tescoes to enjoy the show. There he saw scenes never before seen in Malaysian retail. Cooking oil was whizzing off the shelves. Not only Palm Oil based stuff, but Sunflower, Canola, even the hydrib lo-cal Palm Oil and premium grade Olive Oil stuff! At the counters, fathers and mothers were coordinating their children to queue in separate checkout lanes with 5kg of cooking oil each.

Pak Ya then encountered a fellow retiree, Pak Bakaq. They laughed about the whole thing for a while then spoke to a young reporter, showing off their wisdom by declaring 'there is no shortage', 'people are panicking for no reason' and 'government should just allow market forces to play its role'. Pak Ya and wife then chose to join the fun themselves, queueing in separate lanes and buying 5kg of cooking oil each...

In the meantime, Pak Lah has chosen to announce that he is taking the lead by discussing the 'shortage' at the Palm Oil Industry cabinet meeting. Unfortunately, Pak Lah's boys have not been coordinating things with the DPM Najib's office (why would they?), otherwise, they might have known that Najib had discovered and was announcing his by far more accurate finding that there was no shortage of cooking oil! As a concession to his cabinet colleagues, he had rather fortunately tried to slant his announcement so as not to be too contradictory!

Not surprising really that Najib's office got it more accurately, as his people included a larger number of experienced people, closer to Pak Ya's age, whom he would consult on such matters. Clearly 35+ years of experience in addition to a full UM Econs degree trumps a 5 yr Oxford PPE grad most days of the week.

Anyway, the saga continues to play out with an announcement by Shafie Apdal that the government would now 'flood' the market with cooking oil to resolve the issue (announced after the Palm Oil Industry cabinet meeting). Wow... so was the government hoarding all the cooking oil all this time? No, they just needed to give the proper incentive to the producers I imagine. So, there never really was a shortage of cooking oil then...

Fortunately for the government, as is usually the case in this country as it is in this story, the Malaysian opposition is... nowhere...

References:

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/1/7/nation/20080107130959&sec=nation

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/1/7/nation/20080107145435&sec=nation

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/1/6/nation/19931842&sec=nation

http://www.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/1/8/nation/19942249&sec=nation

http://www.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/1/8/nation/19942249&sec=nation

Cooking Oil, Cooking Oil, Where Art Thou Cooking Oil...

This blogger was recently accused of needing a sex scandal to resume writting. Whilst not denying such things can be inspirational, may I be 'holier than thou' here by proclaiming that it was the clear degeneration in Moral Standards in our leadership that 'inspired' me!

Be that as it may, I now feel compelled to further prove my worth by borrowing from Shakespeare to alude to the fact that not only sex-scandalised Federal Ministers are so cultured, but also to write on something completely devoid of sexual intonations to us 'holier..', cooking oil!

Actually, I had loads in mind to write until I saw the good work done by fellow blogger lulu, and was compelled to quote her instead when agreeing, disappearance of cooking oil may be partly due to high CPO price (indicative of high edible oils price in general as well)...

http://whatalulu.blogspot.com/2008/01/then-it-suddenly-struck-lulu.html

...and likely has very little to do with a prompt 'population explosion' as believed by a certain minister... unless the 'explosion' was due to sudden massive imports of cooking-oil guzzling illegal workers (jeng-jeng!) or if Siti Nurhaliza has been heavily campaigning for the feeding of cooking oil to the more modest baby output making it look like an explosion, of which she has not ...

http://whatalulu.blogspot.com/2008/01/lulus-wondering-if-we-had-sudden.html

This theory of lulu's that price controlled goods are being affected by such shortages more than others is also plausible, though maybe some general economics discussion would be prudent to explain why this may be happening to us Malaysians...

http://whatalulu.blogspot.com/2008/01/lulu-wonders-whats-next.html

OK, everyone who pretends to know economics reckons it is all to do with 'supply and demand'. Unfortunately for many of us, since the publishing of the Undercover Economist among other books, more have begun to understand that economics and the movement of goods is actually more to do with marginal supply and marginal demand.

What do I mean by 'marginal' - well marginal here means effectively the last ton, lori, kg, tanker, litre, bottle, metre, cup or whatever unit/resceptacle of a product that is or may be sold at any time. Movements of marginal supply and demand levels are not necessarily indicative of a shortage in a market for a good, but it may indicate why goods are not being sold.

So, time now for a motherhood statement - just because I like them as it makes me look important! THERE IS NO SHORTAGE OF COOKING OIL GLOBALLY AND CERTAINLY NOT IN MALAYSIA, ONE OF THE BIGGEST MARGINAL PRODUCERS OF EDIBLES OILS!

There is however a structural problem with the country's ability to efficiently distribute food, leading to issues of availability at certain locations at certain times and a need for a better supply chain as one can read from these articles on the web for starters:

http://www.econ.upm.edu.my/~peta/nik/nikmustapha.html
http://www.isis.org.my/files/pubs/papers/LWFoodSecurity&EconomicGrowth.pdf

No mention of cooking oil though, so how is this relevant? It is relevant in the context of the one source of news that Malaysians all rely on... gossip! Compounded by the biggest authority that shapes consumer market movements in the country, rumour!

It begins with Makcik Lela, who whinges to her friend that she couldn't find anything but Mazola at the supermarket. She just happened to mention this while passing by the kedai kopi where Pak Tam, happily asked the owner if he has oil. The owner says yes, but his Minyak Cap Kerja feels like is getting more expensive. Maybe it is because there is less Minyak Cap Kerja since the kedai kopi owner of course knows all about Supply and Demand. Other patrons nod their head in shared wisdom over cups of kopi-o.

Pak Tam in panic rushes home, instructs his wife to rush to the local kedai runcit and buy up all the Mazola left. Whilst his wife rushes along to buy Mazola, which she never buys, spreading gossip along the way, Pak Tam chooses to alert his daughter and all his daughter in-laws of the rumour of a shortage in cooking oil. "Remember the salt shortage?" he says,"This is worse!"

In due course, one of the younger members of Pak Tam's family finds it to be his civic duty to warn the entire staff of his GLC as well as his entire high school alumni and futsal club of the shortage in cooking oil. These fellows in turn decide that they should sms people as people should be warned promptly, and many are not on the web! Then the 'news' reaches the ears of a few politicians, many still reeling and gleeing over a DVD Sex-Scandal, as well as a few bloggers...

OK, I digress...

As I mentioned, back to marginal economics, lulu did have a point when linking the cooking oil and other recent shortages with our government's controlled goods policy. All in all, the policy is a good one as it provides some cost security of some critical food items to the populace, of significant benefit to the poor, but a benefit shared by all.

However, the government must also remember that businesses that produce these goods are there to make money. So, unless these businesses find it favourable and profitable to produce these goods for local consumption, these producers would rather produce the goods for export to more profitable markets or worse, not produce anything at all! They are not 'holier than thou'.

The solution, beyond the distribution issue mentioned earlier, would likely be a review of the control elements, such as price, or perhaps even the systems, mechanisms and processes underlying the control goods policy itself. In the end, whilst controling the cost of cooking oil, salt or other goods for public good, the government must ensure the prices are still better than the marginal cost of supply for the producer, and if needed, better than the marginal export options.

Of course, you need to find better people that those consultants who proposed the National Automotive Policy, but then I am holier than thou...

... by the way, was it those jokers or their friends on the 4th floor who suggested that 'rationing' of cooking oil was a solution. Hahahaha... what sort of unenforcable inefficient measure is this! Do we have to show our MyKad before buying now? Maybe queue at the nearest cooking oil AP holder's place?

PS - I hear even the PM is weighing in on this one now. Come on Pak Lah! It seems only you can solve such a difficult problem affecting so many voters! I'm sure as Finance Minister you know all about Marginal Economics...