New RON95 petrol subsidy programme next year

New RON95 petrol subsidy programme to replace the blanket policy will be introduced next year, announced Economy Minister Rafizi Ramli.

“We will roll out the RON95 subsidy in 2024, I will let you guess when it will happen.

“I have spent one year talking about this,” he said during his speech at the Malaysian Institute of Economic Research’s (Mier) National Economic Outlook Conference.

He was also defensive on the ample time taken to come up with the programme.

“I know analysts keep asking why it takes so long because we have seen how it is done in other countries. The sequencing is important, which means getting everything ready. Once we roll it out, it is expected that there will be unhappiness here and there, there will be teething problems, but we can’t afford a U-turn.

“We have seen so many U-turns, we have seen good policies that have been implemented rather haphazardly and ended up causing so much public backlash that politicians usually turn it around. That’s why I have been accused of being defensive when it takes us a year to prepare the foundation, but I don’t mind,” he said.

“Given our public finances ran a fiscal deficit of more than 5 per cent for three consecutive years, we must find new avenues to mobilise our resources and reduce wastage within the system.

“One inescapable dimension of this is addressing our revenue inadequacy by increasing our tax collection. Spending more money than we have is never conducive to a dynamic, sustainable state,” he added.

This targeted subsidy programme is in line with the government’s goals.