Petroleum Products and tyres prices must fall, says PKP

Kuala Lumpur: Last year the country witnessed a serious plunge in the commodity prices, however there wasn't much deflection observed in the prices of, tyres and petroleum-related products. According to the News Straits Times, the Kuala Lumpur Consumers Safety Association (PKP) is looking over the issue.

Samsudin Mohamad Fauzi , PKP president said that the major industry moguls have been cheating consumers by hiking up prices of their products when petroleum became more expensive, although they refuse to drop prices when production costs come down.

“The price of petroleum has dropped drastically from US$150 (RM652) per barrel previously to US$42 (RM183) per barrel currently. That is a very significant drop, but yet we see tyre prices and petroleum-related products failing to drop in prices. There is no excuse and I hope those in the industry do not use the drop in the value of the ringgit to justify their prices because it is not valid either,” said Samsudin.

He further added that the prices of components used in making tyres, such as rubber, steel, synthetic rubber and petroleum have all been reduced a lot in the past 12 months, despite that the makers are not decreasing price of the products. They cannot justify the high prices even after the production cost is low.

The manufacturers pledged to support the government’s review prices to go with the reduction of commodity prices, the cost of tyres and other products hasn’t followed a similar drop in fuel prices, Samsudin added.

“They have only raised the prices when the cost was high. But when the cost has gone down, their prices are not brought down. This is why I reiterate that they are cheating the consumers,” he said.

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Samsuddin also reported that PKP will work out this issue, the organization will be preparing a memorandum that will be sent to the Ministry of Domestic Trade, Co-operatives and Consumerism, as well as the related associations of manufacturers and importers.

“This is because we believe and have done studies that show, if we want to reduce the cost of living and burden on the people, this is part of what needs to be done. The cost of transportation needs to be reduced first,” said Samsuddin