SHAH ALAM - The Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (Ideas) echoes former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s view that corruption in the food supply and services chain in Malaysia is among the contributing factors of the rising cost of living.
Its chief executive officer (CEO) Dr Tricia Yeoh said this has been proven through a work paper by the Coalition for Business Integrity (CBI) which identified corrupt elements in the supply and services processes causing the increase in costs.
She said following the increase of the costs in business management, the people as the end users had to suffer.
She said the findings of the paper revealed how corruption directly affected the cost of living for users through the pressure created towards the prices of goods and services.
"The collaborative research found how systemic corruption is not only affecting the society at the top, but it also affecting the daily lives of individuals negatively through artificial inflation causing the rise in the cost of living.
"By focusing on development, education and healthcare sectors, research by Ideas and CBI found that bribery was a common practice within the public and private sectors.
"There were other forms of corruption including extortion, misappropriation, deceit and favouritism,” she told Sinar Harian.
CBI CEO Mark Chay shared the same sentiments stating that several problems faced by Malaysians were due to the lack of integrity that was rampant throughout the country’s resources management.
He said the practice of corruption and abuse of power have tampered with healthy competition, restricting private sector development, creating obstacles for foreign investors and inefficiency in government expenditures.
"One of the reasons why the cost of living increased was due to corruption that is intertwined with business costs,” he said.
Recently, Dr Mahathir said the rising cost of living in Malaysia was due to rampant corruption.
He said when there were elements of corruption on each level of management, it would cause the prices of goods to increase and become more expensive.