Perhubungan Persaudaraan Pesawah Malaysia (PeSAWAH) today says the Budget 2022 is “not fair to farmers.”
Chairman of PeSAWAH Mohd Fuad Yaacob in a response to the Budget says, “We’ve gone over all of the documents and discussed them with farmers across the country to get their feedback, and we’ve found that the budget convened this year portrays the issues raised by farmers as fiction.”
“Each time the government presents their annual budget, they allocate the fund for our industries as if the issues brought by the farmers is just not real,” he says.
The budget is unfair to farmers because the cost of paddy has risen many times over the years, while the amount of subsidy allocated has remained constant.
So far, the price of rice is controlled at RM2.60 per kilo while the guaranteed minimum price of paddy (already a fixed price at the factory level) is still RM1.20 per kilo. This does not include the higher-yielding deduction factor (deduction to obtain net weight) by the rice mill.
“This means that the cheap rice enjoyed by Malaysians is actually 100% borne by farmers. This does not apply to vegetables, fish and other foods because their prices rise when costs increase. The increase in costs is also borne by wholesalers and consumers. The 2022 Budget also helps farmers and other food producers who face rising costs but does not help farmers who produce staple food for Malaysians,” says the media release sent to Business Today.
Apart from the paddy issue itself, PeSawah sees a problem that needs to be fixed first, which is the system by the government that needs to be restructured to make it more consistent, he says.
“The system that is no longer working and needs correction while monopolies of seeds and agricultural inputs must be abolished,” he says.
Iffah Salleh contributed to the article
