Brader Anwar Says Right Things About Ending Bernas Monopoly But Misses Point About "Sharing Profits"

 Well obviously Brader Anwar (or his people) have been reading my blog posts challenging Anwar why he has never demanded that the rice import monopoly be abolished. 

 

At last Brader Anwar has made the following statements. I believe this is the first such statement by Brader Anwar about abolishing the rice monopoly. This is a good start :

• Anwar tells govt not to extend Bernas’ concession
• Wednesday, 20 Jul 2022
• Anwar said government should not extend Bernas’ concession 
• company made billions in profits since 2018 
• Bernas profits RM1.2b 2018, RM1.3b 2019, RM798m 2020. 
• nett dividends RM670m to shareholders.
• “This monopoly gives too much profit to one rich company
• This is against food security, food jihad because we allow a monopoly
• 150,000 farmers in this country are still poorest of the poor

OSTB : Excellent points. So far so good. But then suddenly the Braders economic theories take a sudden dive. He says :

• He said import rights should be given to farmers’ associations 
• Import rights should be distributed

OSTB :  So now he says the "rice import monopoly" should be shared. Dont just give one fellow the monopoly but let a few fellows share the monopoly license (aka creating an oligopoly). 

 

He does not understand that the problem lies in the monopolies and the oligopolies. Bernas, farmers associations etc etc are just names of the actors. What has created the problem in making rice expensive and impoverishing ALL Malaysian consumers is the monopoly license. 

 

All the government licensed monopolies are bad. A monopoly cannot become a good thing just because you gave the rice import monopoly licenses to the farmers associations. 

 

This is where the Brader obviously does not understand the economic concepts too well.

 

Then his economic theories dive deeper into the unknown:

• I have no problem with Bernas but distribute (profits) among farmers
• “We demand Bernas ensures distribution to farmers is done fairly. 
• We want direct answer from Bernas on how it distributes profits to farmers

OSTB :  What? Ini teori ekonomi auta Cheruk Tok Kun ke? 

A company can legally distribute its dividends only to its shareholders. How can Bernas simply distribute its profits to the farmers or anyone else who is not a shareholder? 

Even if the farmers associations become shareholders in Bernas the company will still remain a monopoly. The problem lies in monopolies. Not in Bernas or the farmers associations.

And why share profits only with the farmers? What about the rest of the B40 group in Malaysia? Everyone in Malaysia eats rice - bought at monopoly prices. 

2.91 million B40 households.   How many B40 households are there in Malaysia? Based on the Household Income and Basic Survey Amenities Report 2019, the B40 group in 2019 comprised 2.91 million households.2 Jun 2022

This means there are about 12 million B40 individuals in Malaysia. They all have to buy rice at the monopoly price. It is these 12 million B40 individuals in Malaysia who are contributing to  "Bernas profits of RM1.2b 2018, RM1.3b 2019, RM798m 2020".

So why not share Bernas profits with all these 12 million B40 individuals ? What is so special about the paddy farmers? 

And for Brader Anwar's information the paddy farmers DO NOT BUY rice. They usually keep a portion of their rice harvest for their own consumption.  

But 12 million B40 individuals have to buy their rice at the kedai runcit and at the supermarket.

(Hang pi baca buku Qardawi, buku Ben Gelabah, baca Shakespeare hang jadi macam ini lah Brader. Tak faham apa pun).

And then the Brader's teori ekonomi auta does more "kona baring" :

Anwar added paddy farmers had low incomes because they had to sell their harvest at a low rate to keep overall prices low.

OSTB :  What? Ini teori ekonomi kut mana? Since more than 30 years Chinese 'corporate' farmers have been renting Malay paddy fields in Kedah. The kampong people have stopped planting rice because they are too old and their children have left the kampong. So the Chinese farmers rent their paddy fields from the Malay farmers and then they can plant, harvest and sell the rice at a profit. The price is the same. So how do you explain that? 

Worse than that, the Malay farmers (the landowner) also worked as labourers on their own land !! Cina bayar gaji depa !!

The most productive paddy "yields" IN THE WHOLE WORLD are not in China or Japan but here in Sekinchan, Selangor.  

 

Sekinchan paddy farmers can produce above 12 tons of paddy yield per hectare. The highest in the world. They are non-Malays.

In the same Sekinchan area, Malay farmers produce only 3-4 tons, sometimes 4-5 tons of paddy per hectare.  Half or one third of the output of the non Malay farmers. 

• This is NOT a socio-economic problem. 
• Ini bukan masalah 'sosio-ekonomi'. 
• There is no "teori ekonomi auta" that can solve this low productivity. 
• The economists (like my good friend Dr Muhd) cannot solve this problem.
  

This is a socio-cultural problem. 
Ini adalah masalah sosio-budaya. 
Masalah sosio-budaya yang malas. 

The people who can solve this problem should be the sociologists, the anthropologists and the human productivity experts.  Why are the Malay farmers only half as productive? Or 1/3 as productive as non Malay farmers?

Yusuf Qardawi, Ben Gelabah, Abu Gabrar and Shakespeare semua tak boleh solve these problems ok.

Back to economic theory, just remove the monopolies. Period. Full Stop. 

Do not waste time making illogical and uneducated statements like :

"government should allow farmers’ associations to solve (these) problems"

As I said the problem is the high prices of food in this country which are caused by monopolies. Rice monopoly, that 'kartel daging' (what happened to that kartel daging?), cabbage import monopoly, wheat flour import monopoly and all kinds of monopolies which have made our cost of living too expensive. 

Just abolish the government licensed monopolies. No more licensed monopolies.
 

 

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.