Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob’s announcement yesterday that the Cabinet has decided not to increase electricity tariffs for more than nine million domestic users after Energy and Natural Resources Minister Takiyuddin Hassan announced that the new tariff for 2022-2024 would likely be implemented on February 1. Takiyuddin had said that the decision on the increased power tariff was finalised on Wednesday after being discussed six times in cabinet meetings.
As the country is still affected by the economic recession and the COVID-19 pandemic, Ismail had no choice but to bow down to public pressure, by freezing electricity tariffs increase as well as continuing subsidies worth more than RM700 million for domestic users. This is clearly a government not deserving of the people’s mandate with confused decision-making, policy flip-flops and loss of investor confidence.
Again, the Federal government has not learnt from the disastrous failures of serial total lockdowns, COVID-19 SOP U-turns, double standard in enforcement and policy flip-flop that has resulted in nearly 32,000 lives lost, 2.9 million infections and economic losses of more than RM500 billion. Another recent example of policy flip-flops is the recent boast by International Trade and Industry Minister Azmin Ali that Malaysia is the most attractive country in South-east Asia for foreign investments in 2022 by relying on a little-known think-tank, the Milken Institute.
This contradicts the recent announcement by former Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin that more should be done to make Malaysia more attractive and competitive with our neighbouring country. Azmin appears to imply that being the most attractive investment destination in South-East Asia would allow Malaysia to record the highest investments in ASEAN.
Azmin should have practiced full disclosure by revealing that the Milken Institute did not include Singapore in their study, even though Singapore is a member of ASEAN and geographically located in South-East Asia. A more detailed analysis of the Milken Institute survey will be conducted and announced after the Chinese New Year by DAP leaders.
I do not want to see Azmin practice linguistic gymnastics again when Malaysia fails to record higher investments than Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore and even Vietnam in 2022. In 2020, Malaysia recorded USD $3 billion in Foreign Direct Investment(FDI) as compared to Singapore’s FDI of USD $91 billion, Indonesia USD $19 billion, Vietnam USD$16 billion, and even Cambodia had higher FDI than Malaysia at USD $3.6 billion. What will Azmin do if Malaysia fails to exceed all these countries in 2022?