I had planned to blog on only soccer throughout the course of the World Cup. However, the real world is still real and soccer is just a temporary ecstasy. In the real world today and throughout this week, a couple things came up. I wanted to express what I feel on a number of things but I had to economize my time. So, I had to choice which topic I want to blog on. After some thinking, I decided to touch about sugar.

This is especially so when Utusan Malaysia and Chua Soi Lek decide to be two naughty boys today. Utusan, with huge fonts and cheekiness, declares on its front page today that Malaysians are consuming twice the level of sugar that we needed (tag). Read the article at Utusan Malaysia, if you could read Malay:

Terlebih ambil gula -- Rakyat kita guna dua kali ganda daripada kadar diperlukan - Soi Lek

PUTRAJAYA 13 Jun - Menteri Kesihatan Datuk Dr. Chua Soi Lek hari ini berkata, pengambilan gula di kalangan rakyat Malaysia didapati dua kali ganda lebih tinggi daripada kadar yang diperlukan.

Beliau berkata, berdasarkan kajian, secara purata rakyat Malaysia mengambil 125 miligram gula sehari berbanding keperluan yang menyihatkan sebanyak 50 miligram.

"Dalam soal gula di Malaysia, seseorang individu hanya memerlukan hanya 50 miligram sehari tetapi malangnya apabila kita buat kajian didapati pada puratanya mereka menggunakan 125 miligram gula sehari," katanya.

Too much sugar is bad, yes and I agree with it. Unfortunately, I doubt the sincerity of our good doctor - and Utusan - because of the timing. It's hard to imagine that the timing of such statement is an accident since it coincides with our little sugar crisis.

Sugar shortage is not new. Back in April, reports of scattered shortage in the northern states were already out. Now, it gets worse.

Our health minister and Utusan seem to implicitly suggest that if we cut on our sugar consumption, the problem would go away. Sure it would but what causes this shortage is not our level of sugar consumption. If it were, then why didn't we have any severe shortage last year?

It couldn't be that the consumption level was drastically lower than a year ago, could it? Did the level of sugar consumption jumped wildly from what it was a year ago?

Tak. Ngak. Poo. Nee. Non. Nein. Nope. Neither is it caused by smugglers nor hoarders.

I want to reiterate that this shortage is caused by our little price control mechanism. Like I've said before, if there's a price differential of a good between two markets - in my earlier post, I used Malaysia and the world as the two markets - the market with lower priced good would suffer a drain of the good to the other market that priced the good higher. It's a simple arbitrage and nobody should need an economics degree to figure that out. Given, the fix is simple - throw away the rigid price control regime and let sugar prices float.

Just let free market reigns supreme - at least in the sugar market - and I promise you, our sweet little crisis will go away. Free market will take care of the current distributive inefficiency that we are experiencing. Trust me on that. Don't trust Chua Sok Lei. He's manipulating the fact. And don't trust Utusan too.

By the way, Torres' goal during the Spain-Ukraine match is the most beautiful goal so far in the World Cup tournament.


  

p/s - the results between Malay College and Raffles are out. Three games were played at Kuala Kangsar this year - basketball (under 15 and under 18) and rugby under 15. I'm not sure about rugby but for basketball, the Malay College won both matches. From the description I've received, it was a tough fight.

Hey David, you were saying something about Raffles? =p