KUALA LUMPUR: The government will consider increasing the 1Malaysia People's Aid (BR1M) for its recipients on a temporary basis if oil prices continue to soar.
Second Finance Minister Datuk Seri Johari Abdul Ghani said the government is aware of the continuous increase in oil prices and if the increase gives extra income to the government, they are considering helping the people.
“For every increase of US$1 per barrel of oil, it gives the government an average increase of RM300 million in income.
“Currently, the average price of oil per barrel stands at US$52 and if by the end of December next year, the average price increases to US$62 per barrel, the government will have an additional income of RM3 billion,” said Johari when winding up the debate on the Supply Bill 2018 at the committee level for his ministry.
He also answered a question by Datuk Mohd Said Yusof (BN-Jasin) who asked if the increase on oil price would affect the inflation rate of the country, especially since transportation is one of the contributing factors for inflation.
“The transportation sectors weightage is approximately at 13.7 per cent. So, when the oil price increases, only our headline inflation increase and the core inflation remain stable.
“For the last three to four years, our core inflation had remained stable at 2.5 per cent, although the headline inflation had increased to four per cent due to the price increase of oil per barrel,” he said.
In an additional question by Nga Kor Ming (DAP-Taiping), who asked for an explanation on the subsidy given for oil prices, Johari said the subsidy of RM1.6billion was only given to a certain segment of society to stimulate the economy and gave example of fishermen.
He said since the floating system was introduced, although the oil price has gone down only 12 times, compared to the increase of 19 times, the nett impact faced, was only one sen. — Reporting by ARFA YUNUS, FERNANDO FONG AND BEATRICE NITA JAY