KUCHING: Deputy Minister of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Chong Chieng Jen said the country’s rate is under control. He said there is a remarkable decrease in the rate of increase of the Consumer Price Index (CPI). He said in June last year, it was 3.6% and in June this year it was only 0.8%, which was already the lowest.
“In July last year, it was 3.2% and in July this year it was 0.9%. In August last year it was 3.7% and in August this year, it was only 0.2%. In September last year, it was 4.3% and for September this year it was only 0.2%,” Chong said to reporters after witnessing the Signing Ceremony between Megabite Cafe 24 Hours, CS Mini Markets Sdn Bhd, Megarise Sdn Bhd as tenants and Poolarwood Sdn Bhd and Toyugi Group as landlord at Sentosa Parade Commercial Centre here yesterday.
According to Chong also, generally, if one goes to departmental stores and hypermarkets, most of the prices of items have gone down after the abolishment of GST.
“Now after we have introduced SST, of course there are certain goods, whose prices may have gone up, but the effect, I think, in total is a lot less than the effect of GST. “I just want to make it very clear, SST will not bring down the prices of goods as that will be ridiculous to suggest.
But if you compare SST to GST, generally the prices of good will be a lot lower. That is the situation,” he said. Chong said,” We are in contact with the hypermarkets, supermarkets regularly for every fourthnightly, we asked them to supply us with prices of the top 30-50 most scaleable items and their prices and we do monitor it carefully,” he said.
“Generally, if you compare GST with SST, the prices have gone down but because GST is 6% and you cannot expect it to go down to 20%, 30% as a multi layer tax and the 6% is imposed on retail prices whereas for SST, some of the goods will are 5% rate and some of the goods will be 10% rate.
But the tax rate is imposed on cost price, “ he said, adding that there is a difference and there is a very big difference. Chong said,” GST is on retail price. That is the final price that consumers buy.” The other one, the SAT is on cost price.
Chong said ad the price doesn’t really go up, the people also have more spending power. He said the decline in the value of ringgit definitely will also add to the prices of goods because a lot of goods are imported. He said even our food items, about 70 % are imported. We are talking about over 500 food and beverage items that comprise about 30 per cent of them which are prepared locally.
