Government must explain why diesel price goes up by 10 cent to cost RM1.70 per litre from August 1, 2016 as the price of industrial diesel is only RM1.39 per litre today.
Subsidies for RON95 and diesel were scrapped since December 1, 2014 due to falling global fuel prices. Currently, retail prices of petrol and diesel are fixed according to a managed float system, which is based on the monthly average world price of crude oil.
Diesel price was RM1.60 per litre last month. But the industrial diesel was only sold at RM1.45 per litre. If the retail price of diesel is based on the monthly average world price of crude oil in July, the selling price for diesel should have gone down and not up in August. But, BN government has never failed to “surprise” the rakyat.
Therefore, Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Consumerism Minister must now come clean and explain why the Government decided to increase the diesel price by 10 cent.
When the retail price of the diesel is higher than the actual world price of crude oil, the price difference paid by the diesel buyers will become an additional income for the government.
July 2016 was only one of the months where we Malaysians not only did not enjoy any subsidy from the Government, but we actually were paying “hidden taxes” to the Government when we purchased diesel. As the Government has revealed in a Parliamentary reply dated April 7, 2015, Government has collected RM937 millions from rakyat in the first four months since the managed float system was implemented in December 2014. BN Government should now be completely honest to the rakyat, how much profit they have collected until today? How much hidden petrol tax that we rakyat have paid since the managed float system was implemented?