Malaysians need not panic over the weakening ringgit, as long as both government and consumers play their parts, say consumer groups.

Malaysian Consumer Protection and Welfare Board (LPKPM) president Dr Saharuddin Awang Yahya said consumers are wiser in that they understand what is going on economically.

However, Dr Saharuddin said that there are more ways that consumers could contribute, such as buying Malaysian-made products.

“Consumers should not opt for imported items that cost more when they can buy items of the same quality at a cheaper price.

“This would definitely help Malaysia to regain our economic stability,” he said.

He also advised consumers to not spend excessively and only buy what is necessary.

“The currency is dropping so prices of items might go up in the near future. We cannot afford to spend blindly, he said.

Dr Saharudin said the last thing to do right now is point fingers at the government.

“Do not blame them (the government). Instead, we should help them by playing our part, however small it may be,” he said.

He personally suggested the government peg the ringgit against the US dollar, as before in 1998.

According to him this should halt the value of the ringgit from fluctuating.

In September 1998, during Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s leadership, the value of ringgit was fixed at RM3.80 (S$1.35) to the dollar and Malaysia instituted capital controls, which stopped the ringgit from dropping further.

Malaysian Consumers Association (Maconas) secretary-general Amarjit Gill agreed that the government and consumers should work hand in hand to avoid facing a situation similar to Greece’s.

“Sure, the currency is dropping and our purchasing power has lessened whilst incomes are stagnant. It sounds worrisome but it looks like the government is trying their best to handle the situation,” he said.

Mr Amarjit said that it would not be a good idea for Malaysians to travel overseas, especially ones with lower income bracket.

“Even visiting neighbouring countries like Singapore is no longer cheap. Travel locally. Think of it as an opportunity to show our support to the local tourism industry.

“If you must travel overseas, opt for airlines which offer the lowest fares.” he added.

He also advised consumers to make a habit of spending wisely all the time, and not only for critical situations. THE MALAY MAIL ONLINE

http://www.todayonline.com/world/asia/dont...singlepage=true

menteri bodo

Inb4 handphone made in malaysia

bodoh lagi.. salah satu manusia ... DR lagi... certificate dari jamban

Like always.... blame the jews, problem solve.

Last time in year 1998, there were many investors putting their money in Malaysia, that why pegged currency somehow 'worked'.
This time, not many investors left, peg the currency also useless.

This minister is an idiot. Does he know most of our food import from our neighbour nation? Rice for thought? Malaysia is a FOOD importer nation for pete sake.

Buatan Malaysia atau buatan 1Malaysia?

Why no blame civil servants spend govt money excessively ie. screwdriver set for RM3000...

travel locally is more expensive than being overseas.

topkek

During the Asian Financial Crisis in 97, Koreans give up their gold to help their country.
Call me unpatriotic, but should pendatang like me that didn't went to public university due to quota care much? Nope.

pala buto dia menteri bodoh mmg everything yg boleh beli guna ringgit cb

Do not blame the government......

I already try my best to buy local .... anymore local i need to grow my own food lol

najib cakap makan kangkung, kangkung kan murah

he better eat the sand properly

Thanks to their NEP which grab the land and deprieve the hardworking farmer earn better income.

I agree......when I got all B for my STPM, I wasn't accepted by any public university.
Maybe my result is poor and I somehow accepted the outcome, but then.....one of my Malay friend who only got 1C and 3 subject failed for his STPM got accepted into public university...... I was like.....seriously?

This post has been edited by JohnLai: Jul 7 2015, 10:25 AM

Yeah no nid panic coz when 1usd = RM4, our import become expensive.
Not only fruits, grain, maize, corn..
All others manufacturing will be affected.
Factory that relies on spare part from overseas need to cut cost coz their operating costs increases. Later nid to retrench people.. And the chain effect reaction.

well, better cakap ada rumput boleh makan lagi, bersyukur lah wahai kambing semua

Our digestive system cannot process the grass into energy

please list out all the barang buatan malaysia. thank you.

Then u r not helping the economy becoz u no gip money to usahawan bumi tempatan!

Epal iTelefon Enam = RM250

To think that was a blessing in disguise seriously. Currently holding UK degree and masters. Salary not in MYR.

mcb, whose fault is it in the first place!?

datang dah another minister bodoh lvl

pisang goreng pak arnus...

Congratulation for you. I still stuck in Malaysia doing account/tax/audit.

omg thjis is of quality bodoh, narrow minded also can become ministers omg.

better put a monkey there

Nike shoe is USA brand

Converse shoe is USA brand

Laptop is foreign brand

Handphone also foreign brand

Cars, alot of parts are foreign brand

Steel and cement, well, we are the net importer. So how???

is that even buatan Malaysia ?

He is partially right....don't panic cause you won't get anything from being panicked...
Go look for incomes from other currencies...

The 1997-1998 Asian Financial Crisis did something good for the education sector in Malaysia. Because of the crisis, we had realized it was stupid for us to waste precious foreign exchange by sending our children to study overseas. From then onwards, the gov encouraged the setting up of private universities and colleges so now we have hundreds of them.

i was wondering. why now we did not tie up our currency like last time 97 did? current currency is lower compare to that time tho.

also no action from our gomen to curb from continue falling. like inflasi sifar, beli barang buatan malaysia campaign like last time.

we know la ringgit weakening. but why no action wan. haiyoh

“Do not blame them (the government). Instead, we should help them by playing our part




THEN SALAH SIAPA????????????????

sa pikir maslan datang lagi

Kasut beli asadi
Laptop beli 1malaysiapad
handphone beli CSL
car beli proton



DONE

Except the degree from these foreign private universities isn't recognized by Malaysia.
Do you know the accounting degree from Sunway/Monash/Curtin is only classified as "GENERAL DEGREE"?
The accounting degree from public university is classified as "ACCOUNTING DEGREE".

This also happen with engineering degree......classified as GENERAL DEGREE.......



*I should have taken ACCA directly instead of going to private university.
(at least I am exempted from taking 9 fundamental papers.....oh well).

Last time we had imposed capital controls and pegged the ringgit to 3.8 because our foreign currency reserve levels were very low. Now our currency reserves are high, so no need to bother. If we were to defend the ringgit, a lot of the currency reserves would be wasted. Do we really want that?

I will celebrate the fall of the ringgit by spending the upcoming holidays oversea.

I thought, in the case of accounting degrees, the local unis were also not given the exemption already?

artus dah datang

brace urself

oic. ya. i did recall mahathir mention now our foreign capital reserve is billions and way more than 97 that he said to use it for better purpose rather than keep it stagnant.

Another 'change your lifestyle' advice from gahmen idiots. We import mostly everyone these days especially from China. Local industries mostly dead now. Many are fleeing to Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos to start new businesses and ventures because of strong USD.

Me too!!!!

I don't get what are you trying to say. Can you rephrase it?
Exemption by ACCA?

We need the reserves just in case to pay for imports and to pay back foreign loans. If we were to use the reserves just to push the ringgit up, then it would be wasted because that's what speculators are hoping for. We have learned that lesson from the Asian Financial Crisis. Thailand was the one that lost the most reserves by trying in vain to defend. If foreign investors want to exit, then let them exit. Eventually if they see that local stocks are cheap, they would return and that would push up the ringgit.

you're right.
we're a net importer nation.
even the famous kacang bentong has raw ingredients from china

last time the peak was RM 4.8 to a dollar

we panicking because government is shit man. not the ringgit

Low ringgit is good for tourism. Let's all sell nasi lemak at famous spot. Each nasi lemak kosong can be Sold rm 5

so we should wait for gomen to fix this problem and not do anything?

ok guys, sounds like a good plan.

I thought I have read somewhere MIA wanted to remove the exemptions given to a list of local universities from its QE.

MYR drop so more tourist come... then we rob them

Must sell those fancy RM20 nasi lemak at big shopping malls.

made in malaysia using imported parts and subassembly.. then how?

Never heard of this one.....

Trusting a 57 year old racist and corrupt regime right before the biggest collapse ever.

What could possibly go wrong?

This post has been edited by WooTz: Jul 7 2015, 11:24 AM

need to ask meh? I thot we all know the list

here...
LGE
Yahudi
Cina
etc.

You have one damn good point. +1 for you.

of course can sell cheaper mah since demand is through the roof.
ringgit is cheap, demand increase, export increase, trade balance increase = WIN

CCB......they mess it up now ask us dun complain and suck it up....na beh.....

he'll derail the thread to ACCA vs everything else.
let's not do that.

Couldn't find the article about it, but I remember it was a suggestion, but judging from their website, they have not done it yet. Anyway, from the list, you can see most of them are public universities, but I can see some private universities in it, such as UTAR and INTI:

http://www.mia.org.my/new/members_being_application.asp

Ah, pardon me....

In any case, Ringgit drop is an serious issue for Malaysian.
Since Malaysia is net food importer, this is going to affect citizien like us.
It is enough that I need to spend RM600 for food every month. Sad....

This means don't buy Toyota, buy Proton

But proton component isn't locally sourced.....

Food imports constitutes a very small part of our total imports.

http://www.matrade.gov.my/en/malaysia-expo...t-products-2014

another retard in the making of suggesting pegging. u think this 1mdb has the ability to push usd myr from 3.2 to 3.7 in less than 6 months?

come on, 1mdb do have effect on malaysian currency depriciation, but is very minimal.

for those keep emphasizing sgd myr another record high, pls bear in mind, strong sgd vs usd which lead to strong usd vs myr is very Bad for singapore economy in mid term.

the main reason of usd strenghtening againts myr is because USD or USA will for the first time after many years to increase INTEREST RATE.

All this hot easy money when US is busy contemplating quantitative easing, or print money will eventually flow back to USA.

the main culprit of rapid drop of USDMYR is also the rubbish work of BNM that increasing rate too high from 2012 till now. instead, they should have maintain the rate till now.

The pie chart kinda misleading, Malaysian might spend thousand on electronic product, but these generally only applies to those middle income citizens.
Perhaps around 30-40% of Malaysian accounts for the 27.9% of the pie chart's electronic product. We can be certain the processed food 2.5% must be accounts for 100% of Malaysian......(who doesn't need to eat to live?)

Maybe you forgot that we also produces a lot of food ourselves?

bobo menteri

Buy only local newspaper
It is reliable
Without Jew element
Halal
And true to the facts

This time no George Soros yahoodee to blame.
Hahhahaja

Such as?
We still importing our staple rice from Thailand.....

itu consumer, how about us businessman who need to import lot of things. for sure kena upcarprice

Yes, many simply thought a rising Singapore dollar is good for Singapore. They just don't realize that if too many Singaporeans cross over to JB to shop and eat, or if tourists avoiding Singapore, a lot of shops and restaurants in Singapore would suffer.

Correct USD strengthening

BTW, federal reserve won't raise interest rate.
It is US tightening the monetary flow back to USD.

From the charts I think USD has hit maximum strength d.

Don't tell me you don't know that we produce most of the rice that we need? I think only 30% is imported.

But, BERNAS said 30 - 40% ........

http://www.bernas.com.my/index.php/2013-11-07-09-29-58

Depends on demand I guess. Imports might drop and local production would increase if foreign rice is more expensive, which is good for us.

price fluctuation from forex is small, if it were our inflation would show very different figures,

all one has to do is to look at Rm vs Bhat then compare that to our inflation levels,

likewise if we observe restaurants who do import a lot i.e. high end places, tend to not hike prices that much despite having a very price inelastic customers and higher forex risk

Cukurlah musang king masih murah

How would you know?

singapore could not afford to have strong usd vs sgd. i do not know where u get the info USA will not increase rate. to me, it is 100% rate hike, this is why, not just MYR is depreciating, most asia currencies are not spared.

if USA indeed rate hike in september, then good luck in my stock market.

if we have a strong usd vs myr, petronas coffer will be empty by now ( exageratting ), coupled with low oil price.

all these are not as simple as 42 billion Najib 1mdb issue. hundreds of billions are invloved.

to give u all a hints, low currency is the base in pushingeconomy for a manufacturing or export nation.

greece affect malaysia? puke, this is a damn lazy ass nation with gdp less than 0.3 globally.

Macai working hard here

But our export slumped

Hahahahahahah

Local product also about same price as import. If only few ringgit different, why I want to buy local product?

Dont know but I always have the bad perception with the local quality especially food product. See flies flying and sitting on food, nobody cares. Usual respond " ala lalat saje, makan x mati punye."

See the irony here ?

if 1mdb and najib issue become breach of criminal, this is not just affect foreign player run out from malaysia temporaly, but the most important issue is, THE INTEGRITY OF BANK NEGARA MALAYSIA.

Zeti should resign now to.path way for investigation. for mr najib, i have no comment, as u all know, malaysia, with 1 million ringgit, u can buy everyone include judge.

I dunno I should scold badwords or not.

Iberico ribs I had ytd cost about the same before

But our imports also slumped, which means global demand is bad. China, our biggest trading partner, is slowing down.

if USD naik meaning our country debat also naik la

Suka-suka nak peg. How to ganti our reserve later?
Ini semua Proton propaganda

do not use the word slumped, it is a strong words. of course export decrease, especially south east asia, as everyone is feeling the heat of china slowdown.

why gdp and export of malaysia slower, come on, in 2014, when malaysia ringgit is 3.2 times 110 usd per barrel oil, againts now, 3.70 myr times 60 usd per barrel oil, what is the difference?

cpo, 3.2 times peak at 3000 myr againts 3.7 times 2200 average nowadays, how much the different.

the economist are mot genius or as smart as engineering field, they only use final sales amount figure to configure gdp, this is also why, only top students are doctors, engineers, not economist.

Slumps la macai



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