KUALA LUMPUR, July 21 — Communications Minister Datuk Fahmi Fadzil today said the rationalisation of RON95 fuel subsidies has been delayed to allow for further fine-tuning.
He said the reason for the delay is that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim does not want the policy to burden most Malaysians.
“The prime minister expressed his view that he does not want the implementation of any policy to negatively affect the majority of the people.
“It is this process of fine-tuning that has resulted in a slight shift in the timeline,” he said in a press conference at the Parliament here.
According to Fahmi, previous policies had been fine-tuned to avoid causing unnecessary hardship to the people.
“That is one of the reasons why, following the implementation of measures such as the diesel subsidy rationalisation and other efforts, we found it necessary to re-examine the subsidy delivery mechanism.
“In the same spirit of minimising impact, even the expansion of the sales and services tax (SST) underwent further refinements after it was announced.
“The same approach applies to policies that have yet to be implemented but were previously indicated including the targeted subsidy for RON95,” he said.
Earlier this month, Second Finance Minister Datuk Seri Amir Hamzah Azizan said the government is focusing on finalising the details of the RON95 subsidy rationalisation, which was initially scheduled to begin in the second half of this year.
