Kedai 1Malaysia - a ploy that can misfire badly

'It will only last until the next GE after which it will 'tutup kedai' but not before it has killed many honest retailers.'

Utusan slams ACCCIM chief over Kedai 1Malaysia

Kgen: Kedai 1Malaysia sells at unsustainable, artificially low prices, made possible only by back-door government subsidies.

It will only last until the next GE after which it will 'tutup kedai' (close shop) but not before it has killed many honest retailers. Sundry grocery shops earn a very small margin of less than five percent so they are not profiteering.

There is no way Kedai 1Malaysia can sell 40 percent cheaper and still make a profit.

MatrixLYN: The Lion Group has been slowly moving all its business out of the country for years, it comes as no surprise they're moving even more business out of the country.

William Cheng is a successful businessman and knows his stuff. If the country treats you like dirt, why hang around when you have all the money and means to go elsewhere?

Ferdtan: Utusan Malaysia, you can have the MCA-supporter William Cheng. He doesn't fight for the common man like us. He does not speak our 'language': he speaks like an MCA 'towkay'.

The more you hit him, the more MCA will suffer. But isn't MCA your partner? It just won't work playing with racial undertone - William Cheng is not the typical Chinese leader who has the affection of the Malaysian Chinese.

JakiJipang: My relative, who runs a sundry shop, once lamented that wholesalers made him pay a higher price compared with other shopowners of the same race as the wholesalers.

Loyal Malaysian: Let's give credit where credit is due. If the Kedai 1Malaysia is selling consumer products at lower prices because the operator is able to cut costs, then that is indeed a good and noble thing.

If the lower costs is due to direct government subsidies, then it is unfair competition.

Ng Sua Hoon: I think the Chinese need to be fair. We take everything but give very little to this country. We are even hardly patriotic.

Just think, if the government of the day were really unfair to us, how could we have churned out 102 billionaires (latest statistic) in this country.

Ask ourselves, how much do we help the other races. The answer: Hardly. Even our shops practice double standards - special price for us and escalated prices for the other races. Don't we have conscience? Do we have to behave like this?

Lim Chong Leong: Ng Sua Hoon, you are living in Mars or what? We have been dutifully paying taxes but sending our children to rotten schools, which without donations from our rich towkays would have collapsed to bits.

Meantime our tax goes out to everyone regardless of race but is used not that way by our Umno government. They take most of it and give some to the NEP projects which you and I do not prosper from.

The 102 billionaires, who have worked hard, many a time have to suck up to Umno warlords and give them sleeping shares.

When I help, I help other Malaysians, not "other races". Kidney dialysis machines, blood donations, clothes and food for the orphanages do not and should not go out to the needy NEP-style. But our tax dollar is spent NEP-style.

Onyourtoes: We have wholesalers exploiting the retailers; we have wholesalers discriminating against bumiputera retailers, we have small retailers not able to compete with hypermarkets and supermarkets; we have local producers who want protection from imports.

What else is new? Why do we have wholesalers calling the shots nowadays? It is because there are not enough of them around? And why do you think we have not enough of them?

The culprit is the government. It should have approved as many as wholesalers, hypermarkets and supermarkets as there are people who want to operate them.

Let the market forces decide who shall survive. The government has no expertise and knowledge to determine the optimal number of wholesalers/hypermarkets and supermarkets in the country.

To ask the wholesalers, hypermarkets and supermarkets to sell at retailers' prices is stupid. It is the leverage of economics of scale and bulk discounting that should rightly be passed on to consumers.

The retailers just have to compete based on factors other than prices - such as location, services, etc. Look around most developed countries today, aren't there still sundry shops?

Anak Kedah: It seems that now there is a more concerted effort to win over Malay votes for the coming 13th general election, looking at the increase in racist rants by the 'friends of Umno'.

The rakyat should remember that all this sandiwara is meant to distract our attention from the most important issues concerning the rakyat - like the continuous reduction of our incomes, inflation, corruption cases either arbitrarily dismissed or culprits not pursued, money thrown at projects to enrich certain people, seemingly endless abuse of power by people in high places, and the perception of endemic corruption in both the police and judiciary - not to mention the AG's office.

Meanwhile, small issues are blown up so that everyone is distracted. Please let's not waste time reading anything the mainstream media. It's utter rubbish. Let's all focus on the real issues which they are trying so hard to make us forget. - Malaysiakini