Talking

Malaysian government announced that the prices of oil,gas and sugar will increase into a proper stage effective from 16th July,2010 in order to cut some subsidies.The details are as follow:

From Friday, the subsidies for sugar, petrol, liquefied petroleum gas and diesel will be cut as part of the gradual subsidy rationalisation programme, according to a statement from the Prime Minister’s office on Thursday.

The price of sugar will go up 25sen to RM1.75 per kg; LPG will go up 10sen to RM1.85 per kg; petrol RON95 will be up 5sen to RM1.85 per litre and diesel will be up 5sen to RM1.75 per litre.

RON 97 will no longer be subsidised. It will be subjected to a managed float, where the price will be determined by the automatic pricing mechanism, the statement said.

(Reported by TheStar)

In fact,I have totally agreed the movements of cutting the subsidies and I had talked about it one month ago.Oil and gas have been limited resources all over the world and they will create a lot of pollutions.By increasing the prices of them,it could reduce such issues.Eating too much sugar will cause diabetes.Higher price of sugar will let people reduce the consumption of it and so being much healthier.However,I also care about how the government will monitor on spending on savings of those subsidies to affirm that the savings will put into places where it could benefit all Malaysians.

I do hope that the accounts of Malaysian government could be more transparent and the officers could also do the jobs hard and think of the citizens in every second as they are public servants.

The Prime Minister of Malaysia Najib claimed that GDP in Q1 2010 is 10.1% greater than the same period of last year.It seems to be very good news as it indicates Malaysia’s economy is walking out of the mess and turning into a right way.However,some people put some arguments out because they see the growth of Malaysia’ economy is based a large deficit and creating a huge amount of debts.

Malaysia government provided RM18.6billion as the subsidies to petrol price,gas price and so on.It is almost 11% of GDP for the year,higher than many other developed and developing countries in the world(France-1.4%,UK-0.7%;Indonesia-2.7%,India-1.6%,China-0.7%).However,the expenses on subsidies are actually only ranking at No.4 of total expenses.The No.1 expense is for salary and other bonus of civil servants-1.22million of civil servants cost RM52.9billion for the last year-it’s around 3 times of subsidies and 33.7% of the total expenses.That means each public servant could get average income for the year at RM43360,at the same time,the Per Capita GNI(Gross National Income) of Malaysia is RM23567(ie. Malaysia has approx. 27.7million citizens in 2009.)

From the points I can see,I suggest the government smoothly cuts down the subsidies,but also need to cut down the number of public servants by increasing the operational efficiency and applying e-solutions and automation systems in order to facilitate the administrations among different departments.

Malaysia might not be another Greece so soon,but if the government doesn’t know how to control the debts and deficit,I don’t think a better future will be close to the people in this land.On the contrary,the whole country will probably suffer the pain later.

I use the online banking services for many many years because I know that Maybank provides the most flexible online functions up to date.Now Maybank claims that it has developed the mobile portal which will bring more convenience to its existing customers.

Steps to log on the service on mobile devices are quite simple:

Some services could be done by the mobile portal:

• Account Summary
  • Balance Inquiry (Savings, Current, Credit/Debit Card)
  • M2U History, Recent Transaction, Today’s Transactions, Transaction History (Deposit, Credit/Debit Card)
• Funds Transfer
  • To Own Accounts
  • To Registered 3rd Party Accounts
  • To Registered Interbank GIRO
• Payments
  • Registered Bill Payment
  • Card Payment (Own)
  • Card Payment (Registered 3rd Party Accounts)
• View Rates
  • View Forex & Deposit Rates

Well,the service is still under beta stage and so the facilities are quite limited.I think it could be enhanced once it goes through more tests and gets more feedbacks.I wonder which bank will be the next one that will introduce mobile portal to be closer to an e-world.

All are starting from my fresh story.I’m a Maybank user for more than 7 years because I like Maybank2U-the online banking service very much.Thus,I normally save all my funds in my Maybank account and withdraw from ATMs when I need some cash.

Today I just past through Amcorp Mall and found that I only left very few money in my wallet.So I went to the nearest Ambank ATM to withdraw some cash.The terrible thing was there.I inserted my Maybank card into the ATM and followed all instructions as normal.The card returned as well as the receipt,but no cash out.

I stayed there for 5 minutes and yet nothing came out.I decided to go back home first to check the balance of my account online.It was bad that the amount had been credited from my account.Instantly I called to Maybank 24-hour customer service to report this incident.However,the phone was caught after I enjoyed waiting for 20 minutes.This is not the worst.After I got my report number,the staff told me that the fund will only be transferred to my account after 2-4 weeks until the investigation being done.

Oops,I feel I’m so lucky that I didn’t withdraw a big amount at that time.Otherwise,I have to eat bread during this month perhaps.I doubt that as what I know,banks check on the balance every day and furthermore a lot of work in the banks have been electronically.That means all information should be in real time.Why do I need to wait for that long to get my money back?

From this case,I realize that Malaysian local banks don’t know what the efficiency is yet.I’m so surprised!

If you are a credit card holder,I don’t think you will feel so strange on 0% interest.Actually a lot of banks take 0% interest as a big title for their promotions to encourage the existing customers to spend.Recently I got a similar ‘great’ deal from local H Bank introducing in the latest brochure.

In the brochure,it says I’m eligible to make cash advance within the available credit limit of the credit card with 0% interest.Read until this point,I had already raised up my questions:if 0% of interest,what will the bank earn?So I read carefully word for word and found this note:5% cash advance fee will be charged and the 0% interest rate is just for 6 months.

To some simple calculations,we just transfer 5% cash advance fee into annual interest rate,which will be 10%.Please don’t forget that 0% interest is only valid for the half year and after that period,the normal interest rate for credit balance will be charged.Thus,if people take this advantage to get some money,but unable to pay it up within 6 months,he will be charged more than 10% at the end.In fact,a few personal loan interest rates that banks offering are better than this.

Banks always play such tricks to bluff us,so we have to be smart enough to not let it work.

TO BE A SMART CONSUMER!