SST does lower prices of goods, says Yong
KUCHING: The implementation of sales and services tax (SST) has brought down the prices of many goods.
According to Pending assemblywoman Violet Yong, a recent price survey of goods carried out by the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumers Affair in five hypermarkets here showed there were reduction in the price of several items that are subject to SST.
She noted that out of 30 items that were surveyed in the five leading hypermarkets, the price of at least 22 items had actually gone down quite substantially while the price of the other items increased slightly or remained status quo.
“To say that the price of necessities are going up under the SST compared with the goods and services tax (GST) is a baseless allegation,” she told a press conference at Sarawak DAP headquarters here yesterday.
She said this to rebut the statement made by Assistant Minister of Law, State-Federal Relations and Project Monitoring Sharifah Hasidah Sayeed Aman Ghazali, who was reported on Wednesday saying that the price of rice, school shoes, facial cream and many other goods had gone up even after the Pakatan Harapan (PH) government had done away with the GST.
Yong urged Hasidah to go to the ground, to the supermarket herself to personally understand the price of goods and should not parrot what people have said or ‘follow the herd’.
“She herself should go and study the price of goods in the supermarket, otherwise it only shows that she actually had lost touch on the ground.
“Based on the outcome of the Ministry’s survey that I have with me, it is quite obvious that Hasidah just do not wish to accept the true facts that the price of majority of the goods had gone down.”
Yong concurred that there were certain merchants who have marked up their price of goods on the high side.
She called on consumers to exercise their rights to not patronise those supermarkets or shops that sell goods at higher prices.
She believed that generally, prices of goods under the SST were lower than their price under the GST before.
She reiterated that under the SST, some 5,000 goods are being exempted from tax compared to only about 500 items exempted from tax under the GST.