FROM next week, Malaysians will say goodbye to a subsidy that has been almost a part of life. With petrol subsidies gone, Malaysia will join a growing number of countries that have rolled back on providing cheap energy prices at the pump but will be subject to volatile fuel prices going forward.
Absent from the removal of fuel subsidies by the Government has been the expected furore by the public. The one reason for the silence is that unlike previous cuts in subsidies, the removal of blanket subsidies to instituting a programme of a managed float should see prices of fuel stay where they are or in fact drop an inch as globally, crude oil prices have been on the way south for months.
