KUALA LUMPUR – Economy Minister Rafizi Ramli has intensified his call on Malaysians to be selective in patronising restaurants and other eateries that refuse to lower their prices despite costs of raw materials having been maintained and even, in some instances, reduced.
He said that the food price increase in restaurants and hotels is the biggest contributor to inflation.
He urged cooperation from consumers to help regulate it by utilising the recently launched OpenDOSM NextGen platform.
“With OpenDOSM, we (the government) want people to apply data in their decision-making, thus closing the gap between what consumers have to pay and what should be paid,” he said.
“A part of this component is to bring awareness to the consumers so that they are more selective with their consumer behaviour.
“It is the only way for retailers to react. If they do not get a response (on their retail prices), they will have to bring it down,” he added.
“However, if people still pay despite the price drop (of raw materials), then the inflated retail prices will remain.
“The basis is that the public needs to know how quickly the prices change.”
Rafizi’s move to urge cooperation from consumers is due to retail prices remaining unchanged despite prices of raw materials having been lowered and inflation rates showing a trend of slowly flattening.
“When the government uses resources and implements interventions to stabilise or reduce costs, we want to ensure that the price consumers pay is lowered too.
“But it has not happened yet,” he said.
“The price increase when eating out rose even more quickly. It must be reciprocal,” he stressed.
“Ideally, the price imposed on the people must reflect the maintained or reduced costs.
“I understand that restaurant owners will say that they must still bear costs that have not been reduced and that their margins are still razor-thin,” he added.
However, it is an issue when raw materials are in a “healthy” price range, yet this is not reflected in retail sales to consumers, he explained.
Rafizi clarified that having the government control all goods’ prices is beyond its capacity, as it will ultimately lead to consumers having to pay more in taxes.
Nonetheless, he said that consumers should now be able to make sound judgements when comparing prices in restaurants with data from OpenDOSM, and hoped that the demand curve becomes more elastic and price increments are controlled.
OpenDOSM is an official statistics platform that contains 28 million data on the prices of goods in numerous locations nationwide, among others. It can be viewed using PriceCatcher, an application by the Domestic Trade and Cost of Living Ministry that shows the prices in real time with a one-day lag.
Rafizi had previously reprimanded a number of restaurants and eateries for not lowering their prices despite the declining price of raw materials, and suggested that consumers avoid restaurants that are still selling at high prices.
However, his suggestion received flak from former prime minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob, who opined that the government should come up with solutions instead of pointing fingers at restaurant operators. – The Vibes, January 25, 2023
