Weekly fuel price revision starts in Malaysia

After much debating and deliberation, the government has finally kicked off the weekly fuel price revision in Malaysia. How does this mechanism work exactly? Well, to you and me, the fuel prices will be announced every Wednesday, and take effect from midnight (that's 12.00AM, Thursday morning).

Of course, the calculation behind the fuel prices are still a mystery, so we can only guess based on the price of oil as a global commodity, whether or not to fill up by Wednesday or wait until the next day. Play this guessing game each week, and after awhile, everyone will just resign themselves to accepting this new system.

There's some talks that soon, petrol station operations will be able to apply to to offer discounts, but so far nothing official yet from the Ministry of Domestic Trade, Co-operatives and Consumerism. This floating pricing is a far cry from the system we had before 2015, where prices were fixed by the authorities, but was subsidized by the taxpayers. Still not quite like what I've seen in several countries like Australia, China and Germany, where fuel prices are completely unregulated and set by the individual petrol station operations.

For me, my car was coincidentally running on fumes (zero bars left) by the time I refueled, but the good thing was a slight positive upside as the new price of RON95 this week was RM2.13 per liter (down from RM2.30 per liter). RON 97 was also down from RM2.60 to RM2.41 per liter, while Diesel is now RM2.11 per liter (from RM2.20 per liter). This is reflective of the current market conditions, or is to give a "good feeling" for the initial stages, we'll probably never know...

A step in the right direction, or are we better off adopting a different approach over here in Malaysia? If you have any views to share, do drop a comment below.