When Losing A Dollar Makes More Cents

Malaysians and oil prices are a very sensitive issue... For an oil producing nation who exports most of its production, we are spoilt by subsidised petrol and diesel for our daily use to the point citizens seem to think its their birth right to have cheap petrol for the rest of their life.

At the current world oil price.... The price of petrol in Malaysia stands at RM 1.90 per litre of RON95 (US$0.65 per litre or about US$2.50 per gallon) and about US$3.65 per gallon for RON97 or the supergrade petrol. It is ranked as the top 10 lowest in the world and it is largely due to subsidy by the government....now i'm not heaping praises just yet but the point is people don't see it as an outflow of tax revenue which can be used for other purpose.

Hence whenever the Govt tries to cut back on the subsidy in the weight of increasing world prices....it is drowned by cries from consumers and opposition who blame the govt for poor fund management and burden the people. Some even swear that they will reduce petrol prices back to low prices if elected into power..... Wonder where they gonna pull magic figures out from....

So to appease the people, the Govt decided recently not to hike petrol prices by 30 or 50 cents per litre (malaysian cents) and much to the relief of the citizens....

Instead they announced they will revamp the Malaysian Currency to give it a new look with extra safety features..... And lots of people are actually excited to know how it will look like.... What features it has and who will doing the new designs....

Mind you....if this goes through it will be the 3rd look for the currency which i will witness in my 30 years of life.....

Nobody seems to mind that it costs ALOTAMONEY to print currencies!!!!

Safety features? If someone wanna forge or make counterfeit...i think for the effort its better to make fake USD or UK pounds or EUROS....more value. For me the only security i need is if my notes goes into the washer and dryer....it won't be damaged beyond its use as a legal tender.....

In a nutshell.....lets save a few cents from our pockets to maintain petrol prices. Govt subsidise more for petrol. And we get new currencies at the expense of.....gasp! Our own pockets.......

New proverb....pound foolish, penny stupid

if you ask me...i prefer the old design