Subscribe in a reader | Subscribe by Email You can say that I’m one of citizens directly impacted by the prike hike due to fuel price increase. Renovation, material and electrical/house items prices increased by 20-30% after July 5th. The Star reports that:
A house that cost RM100,000 to build will now cost about RM130,000 with the prices of all types of building materials up by 15% to 30% across the board.
Steel Bars: Now RM4,100 per tonne compared to RM3,500 in June.
Cement: Now RM13.45 a bag compared to RM10.95 last month.
Bricks: RM0.245 each compared to RM0.22 previously.
Ready mix concrete: RM190 per cubic metre compared to RM160 last month.
Copper: RM28,275 per tonne now compared to RM3900 three years ago.
Prices of other building materials such as sand have also gone up by 25%, quarry products by 30% and tiles by 22%.
As for me, costs for renovation and buying equipments/items increased about 20-30%. Bankrupt la 🙁
Not only that, from my experience in the last two weeks (bargain hunting), there’s fear among the shop owners (mainly Chinese) that people won’t spend more freely. They are repeating the mantra “book now, price will increase soon”. This creates a fear in consumers to buy in bulk or make deposits to secure current prices.
Prices that affected include:
- Tiles
- Installation for air-cond units
- sinks
- biscuits
- processed poultry items
- ice cream
- KFC
- cooking oil (corn)
- eating out at indian restaurants
Besides shop owners , contractors were also telling similarly to residents to kickoff reno prior July .
anyone got salary increment of 20-30% ??
So dun you guys feel that merely comparing oil price with Singapore and Thai is an idiotic trick ?
The terminlogy of ‘BarangNaik’ is proven .
VJ,
You say we cannot compare with Singapore because they have higher std of living but also don’t want to compare with Thailand because they are poorer. This is an idiotic argument. It is like saying “Heads I win, Tail you lose”.
The price of house and raw material increase has nothing to do with fuel hike. It is because some of these matls are imported and the prices has gone up due to globally.
The price of oil has risen in almost every country in the world, and not only in Malaysia. So are these countries also ruled by BN ?
Perhaps you should travel the world to understand the situation rather than stay home like katak bawah tempurung and real some silly political blogs and believe all the lies that they spew out.
Compare oil price with oil-producing countries and oil-importing countries. Oil-producing countries have subsidies to cushion the price effect, where else oil-importing countries do not have any subsidies and therefore have to pay on their own.
Here in Australia we have to pay high price as well, but nobody is complaining. You want to know why? Coz we don’t produce oil and the government doesn’t have any other means to subsidize.
But in Malaysia its different and you know why.
actually, the rising price of material is affected due to both external material price rise and the internal fuel price increase. in my opinion, the internal fuel price hike caused a bigger impact rather than global prices, maybe 70/30 or 60/40.
some of the raw materials are exported instead of being used for local consumption. wholesalers and contractors grumble that manufacturers and suppliers are hoarding materials and waiting for price increase. the rise in petrol and diesel price causes increase in logistics. it costs more to transport a lorry of sand. are we importing sand? it costs more to transfer the construction debris to the waste dump. all this costs are being pushed to the consumers.
then there are those materials that are imported (steel and cement for example) and at the same time being exported. companies want to export so that they can benefit from higher global prices. but local contractors have to pay higher to buy these materials from imported sources.
finally, those products that are fully imported – no choice but to face higher prices. examples are foodstuff, dairy products, clothes, electronic parts, etc.
Killer,
hope i’m not one of the “silly political blogs” 🙂
Dear Poobalan
I respectfully disagree.
The locally manufactured materials are not increased because of the fuel hike. If you read the newspapers before the fuel hike, the contractors already increased the prices before that. This fuel hike just gave them a convenient excuse. Look at the major projects like 2nd Penang bridge, Iskandar and every other mega civil projects. All of them was increased well before the fuel hike.
Yes, some of the materials are locally produced but the global prices of these materials have gone up so these manufacturers are hoarding and also prefer to export. Had the world prices are cheaper, the govt would have easily allowed the import of these materials to reduce cost. But some like sand could be affected by fuel hike. But come-on, what kind of increase we are talking about for logistics, 2 to 5% max when you factor in the total cost.
well killer,
why does locally manufactured materials prices increase? we can understand if imported items prices increase, but local products? due to hoarding? yes, prices of some materials increased before july 5, but the impact was gradual or even minimal. let’s not look at mega civil projects which already have inflated prices. the prices for small construction projects – house renovation for example, was roughly the same between feb and may (about 5% variation). guess what happened in june. this is around my own area itself. this is what the people see, not some mega projects which is on paper. sudden increase in prices that is attributed to fuel price increase. sure, it is may be a mere convenient excuse to the businesses, but who gave them the convenience?
when talking about construction materials, only two were severely affected – cement and steel. then followed by metals like copper, zinc etc.
i think logistics and transportation is causing a major headache. it is causing an avalanche effect. the cost of raw material increases, the cost of transporting raw material increases, the cost of production increases, the cost of transporting finished products to warehouses/distro centres increases and so on, till the cost of sending milk tin to small sundry shop also increases. logistics cause 20% increase (minimum) i’ll say. sounds ridiculous, but as you said its a convenient reason afforded to the producers, retailers, transporters, wholesalers etc.
this domino effect is felt in all sectors. soon, commissions for all agents will be higher, tuition cost will be higher, middlemen will charge higher…
Hi Poobalan
Frankly I would not been so disappointed if reply of such quality came from people like VJ,Killi, Sactyr and other similarly intellectually retarded folks. I certainly expect a better argued, more intelligent and well researched reply from someone as smart as you are. Had you been drinking ?
I am talking about the issue as I do know the industry well. I have several members of the family who are in the industry and I do follow the industry trend out of interest personal rather than due to professional reasons.
I am not going to talk long, it is sufficient to say that the biggest cause of price increase is the raw materials,especially cement and steel. There is an impact caused by petrol fuel hike, but that is insignificant as compared to the total cost of the house / project.
I know nothing I will say would convince you.
So instead, I will point out to the MBAM (Master Builders Assoc of Malaysia) and you can read all their announcement and press statements to see if what I was saying was not correct. And then you let me know if you changed your views.
http://www.mbam.org.my/mbam/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1
hi,
i don’t consume alcohol, if that’s what you mean 🙂
in the construction industry, increase in cement and steel prices is the main cause, but increase in fuel price is not far behind as transportation of these materials and basically everything else is affected. even then, the price increase is suspected due to hoarding, export and selective production to cause artificial shortage.
my point is that the petrol price hike gives another excuse, not only to manufacturing, but all other industries as well. as you said – a convenient excuse.
i read the MBAM statements (they do appear in papers at times). thanks for the link. MBAM seems to blame the manufacturers for price increase of cement and steel. the statements indicate manipulation of prices.
thanks MP . Most contractors cited the reasons you mentioned .
See , these are heavy materials which need lorry or truck which consumes heavy diesel based on their weight . So they say if we dun increase thn ‘apa macam cari makan?’ .
Killer , why you always get ‘Tail’ uh…..?
MP , probably Killer was refering his party blog lar……
price of any commodity will still be tied with either local or global petrol price hike …..
do check out this article from Far Eastern…..
http://www.feer.com/economics/2008/july/The-Cost-of-Surviving
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