PUTRAJAYA: An ecosystem based on price data from across the country to inject price elasticity and supply will be developed in an effort to help control inflation in the future.
Economy Minister Rafizi Ramli said the ecosystem that will be launched within a month will be developed and driven by the users themselves, which will help increase elasticity on the demand side.
“I hope we can provide an ecosystem where buying habits are largely influenced by reasonable prices, (so) a trader for example wants to raise the price of the food he sells from time to time, he thinks twice, it’s not that easy.
“The ecosystem has to be driven by consumers. If we can build in the vast amount of pricing data that we have and find ways to incorporate that into the user’s screen habit, which I hope will be driven by the public and from there we can see how far we can do,” he said in a press conference on the publication of the November 2022 Consumer Price Index (CPI), here, Friday.
Rafizi said the Government will not be directly involved in developing a platform for the ecosystem, but instead will help those who are willing to develop the ecosystem by providing data related to the average price of certain goods obtained from the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DoSM) and the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Cost of Living (KPDN).
Rafizi also said consumers need to play a role in making the supply and demand for goods more elastic, including not buying products that are sold at a higher price than before, so that indirectly the price of an item does not rise too high.
He said consumer behaviour in Malaysia shows that even though the price of goods continues to rise, consumers are seen to be willing to pay at the price offered by the seller.
Stressing that he does not recommend consumers to boycott a trader, rather consumers are encouraged to buy from traders who sell at a reasonable price.
“It’s not a boycott but you don’t have to buy, it means he has many substitutes. If you get people more aware of the fair price accountability, at least we want to manage both sides of demand and supply so that demand do switch and substitute.
“What it means is, if the price charged by a dealer is felt to be too high compared to the average price of other dealers, it is appropriate for consumers to stay away from that dealer so that the reduced demand factor will pressure the dealer to lower the price,” he said.
Rafizi said the data from the November 2022 CPI shows that one expenditure category that most affects inflation is the price of food and non-alcoholic beverages, which is the largest expenditure group for households.
“Weighing 29.5 per cent of all household expenditure categories that determine the CPI, food items and non-alcoholic beverages are the largest expenditure group for households.
“Expenditure on food and non-alcoholic beverages is divided into food at home (at 16.9 per cent of expenditure) and food outside the home (at 11.5 per cent of expenditure),” he said.
