‘DON’T HIKE POWER TARIFFS YET’

Get feedback from businesses first so prices of goods, services may be kept low, Rafizi urges govt

THE government should reconsider its decision to increase electricity tariffs for the commercial sector following the implementation of the Imbalance Cost PassThrough (ICPT) mechanism.

PKR vice-president Rafizi Ramli said this was to avoid traders using the increased tariffs as an excuse to not lower their prices despite the zero-rating of the Goods and Services Tax (GST).

He said the increase in tariffs would directly affect domestic and non-domestic users. Non-domestic users would no longer enjoy a rebate of 1.52 sen per kilowatt per hour (kW/h) and have to pay an ICPT surcharge of 1.35 sen per kW/h.

“So, the tariff increase for non-domestic users is 2.87 sen per kW/h. This represents an increase of 6.6 per cent.

“I worry that this increase will be used as an excuse by businesses to not bring down the prices of goods and services, even though Pakatan Harapan has kept its promise of doing away with the GST (by zero-rating everything before repealing the GST Act),” he said on Facebook.

Rafizi said the government should consider postponing the tariff increase till next year to get feedback on steps to ensure that the prices of goods and services remained low.

He said despite GST being zero-rated and the prices of fuel retained, businesses and industry players could take advantage of not just the increase in tariffs, but also the implementation of the Sales and Service Tax (SST) in September to not bring down their prices.