During the Hari Raya holidays, I ran into an old friend of
mine who works in Bank Negara. We talked over a range of topics seeing that we
have not met for quite a long time.
Over the topic of his newly opened coffee house, the conversation took a sharp turn towards the state of Malaysia’s food supply.
He is of the opinion that Malaysia is on the verge of a food crisis. His argument is simple. Over the last 5 years, the price of basic necessities in this country has never gone down. Consistently basic necessities have increased in terms of price even the so-call control items.
By right, the price of food items should have gone down
during the 2009 recession because recessions are supposed to neutralize the
effects of inflation. But, that didn’t happen. In fact, during the Malaysian
recession, our food prices actually went up signalling a big problem with
supply. In short, the impending food crisis in Malaysia will be due to short supply
of food.
He argues that the rise in food prices is the result of
years of neglect and deliberate implosion of the agricultural sector from 22
years of Dr Mahathir rule. He knows for a fact that Dr Mahathir has never liked
the agriculture sector.
Mahathir appointed Sanusi Junid as the longest serving
Agriculture minister in history when everybody knows Sanusi Junid’s career is littered
with failures. The appointment of Sanusi
Junid ensured the regression of our algriculture sector.
(NOTE: Ever knew what happened to Sanusi Junid’s campaign to
get people to drink koko?)
Massive areas of fertile lands was turned into housing
areas, manufacturing free trade zones, office building blocks and not to
mention white elephant projects.
In addition, fertile lands were also used to grow commodity
crops like Oil Palm. Thus, resulting in shrinking domestic production of food items
like rice, vegetables etc.
As a result, Malaysia which is blessed with large swathes of
fertile lands turned into a food importing nation. We import every single item
that we eat from rice, beef, vegetables, fruits and many more.
In fact, the only meat that Malaysia exports is pig meat.
Yes, Malaysia is a pig meat exporting country. Congratulations.
So, when the world oil price increased by leaps and bounds,
the cost of importing food items increased also.
Compounded with the problem of Malaysian average wage
stagnation, average household spending on food increased as well eating up more
of an average household disposable income.
In short, thanks to Dr Mahathir and his short sightedness
(and not to mention his utter ignorance on how to run a country’s economy), Malaysians
now have to spend at least three times what they use to spend on food just to
get the same amount of food they use to get.
We should commend the Menteri Besar of Kedah, YAB Ustaz
Azizan Abdul Razak for instantly cancelling the Merapoh Oil Refinery project
that was planned to be built over 4200 acres of fertile paddy field. The project
was, of course, approved by the then Barisan Nasional government exhibiting
their complete disregard to the state of food supply in this country.
In short, our problem with food prices can be summed up as
follows:
a.
BN’s preoccupation with development spending has
totally stunted our country’s agriculture sector NOTE: More opportunity for
corruption in development spending as compared to agriculture.
b. BN’s liking of commodity crops is understandable because only large corporations benefits from commodity crops. The average people benefits very little from it
b. BN’s liking of commodity crops is understandable because only large corporations benefits from commodity crops. The average people benefits very little from it
c.
Malaysia becoming a food importing country makes holders
of import permits for food items can become instant millionaires. They can
manipulate prices in the market. Import permits are at the sole discretion of
UMNO dan BArisan Nasional
d.
With our wages being stagnant for the last 15 years or
so, the rise in food prices has made
average Malaysians poorer and more depressed
average Malaysians poorer and more depressed
e.
If we want to continue with our food prices being
expensive and more expensive, we should continue supporting UMNO dan Barisan
Nasional.
TULANG BESI
3 comments:
This is also another fine example of what the grand son of the pariah from Kerala, the shenanigan Mahathir, has done to Malaysia.
In fact all the woes and problems were started by this shenanigan in his 22 years as P.M. of Malaysia.
He was only too busy building all the mega white elephants and big projects for the mega 'commissions' that would enable him to collect the mega 'commission' that went with them. He did not implement those projects so that Malaysia would go into the first world. That is why Malaysia still remain in the third world and badly and poorly rated in every field in all the international surveys.
The worst of them all is that the nation is supposed to be blessed with many natural resources. Thus should therefore has plenty of money left in its coffer but instead Malaysia is now in debt and the budget for the last so many years are in deficit. It is now rated just the same as Spain and Italy, about to go bankrupt.
When the neighbour Singapore who has absolutely nothing, no natural resources, not even sands to develop the many projects they now have.To ensure that Singapore was retarded in its growth just so the world can see how Malaysia has grown under the shenanigan.
The shenanigan even banned sands from being sold to Singapore to achieve his sinister ambitions. No doubt he failed to achieve his aims
To day they have trillion of ringgits in their reserve and a recent international survey rated Singapore as the richest nation in the world.
Why ? What Singapore has is a bunch of honest and intelligent politicians that not only bring Singapore into the first world and best of all kept all the hard earned money in the country and not in the foreign private bank accounts, the way the corrupted Umno politicians do.
No doubt soon Malaysia will go into austerity drive and may even approach Singapore for a loan just to pay all the corrupted and lazy civil servants. To prevent these from eventuate just kick the scumbags and parasites out of Putrajaya in the coming GE which Najib is using all kind of excuses to hang on to power.
Thailand has done very well in agriculture sectors They export a lot of food items rice fruits vegetables and also processed food items
Sadly agriculture has been neglected by BN although Badawi did try to make agriculture a priority but nothing came of it
When I graduated and started work it paid just over RM1k. Now my son graduated look for job, it's about more or less the same!Is this a joke or what? Our staple food bread here is RM2.10 where i got a slightly bigger wheat bread while in SYDNEY recently for A$0.88,a 2-litre fresh milk/orange juice A$2, a well marinated fat whole chicken A$10.The grapes and fruits price are unbelievable even to us tourists.Can somebody, anyone do something right to help us all struggling with alarming high food prices? Let's forget about wanting the tallest,biggest this that for once and put some cheap bread on the table for simple folks.
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