PRIME Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim made some welcome announcements involving tightening the government’s belt on Budi95, the targeted petrol subsidy programme.
We should note the relatively extreme measures countries in the region are taking in response to the fuel crisis.
Thai civil servants are working from home, and being advised to use stairs instead of elevators.
The Philippine government has switched to a four-day work week.
South Koreans are being told to reduce hot shower times, and to not charge their phones during the day.
In light of all this, perhaps we should be questioning whether more vigorous steps are necessary.
The Prime Minister himself noted that 90% of Malaysians do not even use 200 litres worth of Budi95. If this is the case, then how much money or fuel will we actually be saving by lowering the quota?
We were told that our monthly fuel subsidy bill has gone from RM700mil to RM3.2bil because of the Middle Eastern conflict.
When I first saw those numbers, I had to double check that it said “monthly” and not “yearly”.
If we are paying RM2.5bil more a month now than we had originally budgeted for, perhaps measures that affect only 10% of Budi95 users might not be sufficient.
Of course, we appreciate the government’s efforts to try and minimise the impact of the conflict on the pockets of the working class.
It just might be that the longer-term interests of the working class – and every other class for that matter – might be better served the sooner we take more stringent measures.
It might be easier to visualise that there will likely be a relatively limited amount of fuel that we can access. The sooner we start measures that reduce consumption, the longer that fuel will last, and the less exposed we are to sudden shocks and pain.
Reducing the fuel subsidy quota is a step in the right direction, but can we justify such a light measure compared with our neighbours?
Malaysia is a net exporter of energy, but a net importer of oil.
This likely puts us in a position that might be slightly better relative to many other countries, but perhaps not such a good position that we can afford to only take measures that are so mild, relative to those countries.
Of course, we should not advocate panic or overreaction. It is always wiser to take measured steps that are proportionate and well thought out.
At present, however, besides reducing subsidy quotas, we seem to be barely taking any measures or advocating any type of energy conservation at all.
Even letting civil servants work from home seems to only be “explored” at this time.
Conserving energy does not, in and of itself, have many downsides.
This is something we should be doing anyway, especially given the vast challenges of climate change.
I think Malaysians, the vast majority of whom are likely aware of the situation in the Middle East, can be understanding if the government started pushing for more energy conservation.
I don’t think there’s a need to look into any massive increase in petrol prices. But something more than a step that only affects 10% of Budi95 users may well be warranted.
Working to create a movement where Malaysians are working together to conserve energy in the face of an unfolding global crisis, as well as to help protect the environment, can create a shared sense of national purpose – something I have often said Malaysia severely lacks.
Without a shared sense of purpose, and goals that would benefit the entire nation to work towards, Malaysians tend to fall back into petty in-fighting and squabbling over things like race and religion.
Our leaders can play a much more positive role by instead directing national conversations around ways we can work together to help the nation as a whole weather these economic storms.
Both leaders and the nation have a lot to gain by being more proactive, and by taking more measured, proportional preparations as early as possible, so we are not caught unprepared when the crisis finally slams into us.
Given the highly volatile, unpredictable nature of key players in the current conflict, especially on the American side, there really is no telling how long this crisis could go on.
We cannot simply live in hope that the conflict and its repercussions will somehow disappear overnight, and the slower we are to take proportional measures, the faster we are going to run out of reserves, while the conflict rages on.
Besides vital conversations about how we can reduce energy consumption, we should also be having national conversations about how to position ourselves in the new global geopolitical and economic order.
As the conflict cuts off massive swathes of the flow of energy from the Middle East to Asia, other energy producers – notably America, who started this whole thing at Israel’s behest – may seek to exploit and leverage certain advantages over Asia.
Do we have alternatives? Should we be leveraging more on certain advantages, relationships, or alliances to shift paradigms in our favour? How do we position ourselves vis-a-vis old and new superpowers, amid such rapidly shifting sands?
There are no quick or easy answers to these questions, but we must meet them head on, rather than becoming like an ostrich, with its head buried in the sand.
Rough seas are ahead, and we are going to need everyone on board the great Malaysian ship to know how bad the storm is going to be, and what role they are going to need to play for all of us to survive and thrive.
Nathaniel Tan is a strategic communications consultant. He can be reached at nat@engage.my. The views expressed here are solely the writer’s own.
