PETALING JAYA: Economic affairs minister Rafizi Ramli has expressed hope that a mechanism to facilitate targeted subsidies could be developed next year for eligible recipients.
Rafizi said that the question was what system could be used to determine who was eligible for such subsidies, Bernama reported.
“The challenge that the government has now is to not only ensure that the mechanism is fair but it is also very important that it is implemented quickly,” he was quoted as saying.
He said the mechanism needed to be developed as soon as possible to enable the government to distribute subsidies and financial assistance to the people in a targeted manner.
“We have to expedite a proper rollout of a sophisticated, and if possible, an index-based targeted subsidy system hopefully very soon (matter of months rather than years).”
He added that there was a need to reallocate resources from blanket subsidies that were tied to disposable income, household size and consumption.
“Hopefully we can get the landing in a matter of months so that we can get a date for such a system to be rolled out.”
On a separate matter, Rafizi said the Cabinet has agreed to reduce the basic average tariff for the use of gas facilities to be paid by users for the second regulatory period (RP2) starting from Jan 1, 2023 to Dec 31, 2025.
