Annual Price War

Star Q

i.  B4 DL3 E1

ii.  Kimchi Fried Rice

iii.  Kejohanan Olahraga Kali ke 61

Every year during this time of the year, people will be complaining about the price hikes of most of the foodstuff on sale.  By this time of the year I mean when it is near to the fasting month and the impending Hari Raya.  Is it me or does the price of things keep going up every time there is some kind of festivities going on?

I went to the market this morning and found out the price of chicken per kilo has gone up to RM9.  It was RM8 just last week!  I asked myself, how can chicken, considered a staple food, undergo such an increase in that short a time?  I mean, it's not that I hadn't noticed the prices of things going up by ten cents or twenty cents from the beginning of the year.  But, like other consumers, I have taken the additional expenditure within my stride because, I thought, I could still handle it.

But today after the chicken price incident I was more than overwhelmed by the whole situation.  It made matters worse, while watching the news on television, I heard a FOMCA representative saying that in order to get the sellers to bring down the price of foodstuff, the consumers should exercise their purchasing power and stop buying food that the prices has gone up.

On the one hand it sounded like a fair suggestion.  On the other hand, the suggestion given by the representative was a mere rhetoric.  I mean no consumer would stop buying rice just to get the price of this staple food to come down.  No consumer would stop buying fish just because the fishmonger has increased the price.  The reason is all these food are staple food.  And it is the staple food that has experienced increase in price.

The sellers know that, at the end of the day, they do not have to bring down the prices of any of the food items because consumers will continue to buy them because they are necessities.  And they also know that no matter how much price increase they incur on the items, no actions will be taken against them.

With two adversaries against them, it looks like the consumers are losing the price war.