PUTRAJAYA: The government has identified 35 types of essential items placed under the Price Control and Anti-Profiteering Act 2011 following the hike in prices of these goods.
Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin announced this after chairing a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Supply and Price at his office, here, yesterday.
Muhyiddin said the move was made based on the needs of consumers in the low- and medium-income groups who would be much burdened by any food price hike.
He said the 35 essential items included chicken and chicken eggs, local beef, pork, bananas, watermelon, cencaru fish, selar fish, white prawns, white cabbage, big onions from India, shallots from India, sardines, Milo and milk.
On the increased prices of chicken and meat, Muhyiddin said besides enforcing the Price Control and Anti-Profiteering Act 2011, the government would be introducing a number of initiatives to deal with the hike in prices of essential goods.
He said one of the initiatives was to set the export quota for livestock feed, which was one of the contributing factors for the rise in the prices of beef.
As for the increased price of chicken, he said it was due to the rise of up to 70 per cent in the import price of chicken feed.
“Our chicken production is more than sufficient and the price of chicken is rather high. By right, when supply is more than demand, the price should go down.
“But our case is unique. Production has increased 127 per cent but the price of chicken has gone up.
The main cause is corn which is used to feed the chickens and it has to be imported,” he said. In light of this, Muhyiddin said, government agencies like the Veterinary Services Department and Mardi had been asked to conduct research on oil palm fronds as alternative food to the imported feed for ruminant livestock.
The deputy prime minister said the government would also focus on planting coconut trees due to the rising price of coconut in the world market today.
He said coconut planting could no longer be seen as a traditional agriculture activity but needed to be commercialised as the country now had to import 300 million coconuts each year while the local annual output was only 400 million coconuts. — Bernama