Ministry monitoring prices on Pangkor Island ahead of duty-free status

IPOH (Dec 23): The Perak branch of the Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry is carefully monitoring the prices of goods and services on Pangkor Island to ensure there is no price hikes ahead of Pangkor being declared a duty-free island on Jan 1, 2020.

Its director Saifullizan Kamarul Zaman said officers and personnel had carried out monitoring since the beginning of this month and will continue in the future.

“We expect that after the proclamation of Pangkor as a duty-free island, there will be traders taking advantage (raising prices) because the island will receive a lot of tourists.

“We have conducted checks and will be frequently monitoring the prices of products. We will do the same in January and every quarter of the year, we will take down the prices of essential goods and goods related to hotel services, restaurants, salons and so on,” he said.

Saifullizan said this to reporters after launching the 2019 State-level Festive Season Maximum Price Control Scheme for Christmas at Tesco Ipoh here, today.

He said they were also working with the Pangkor Small Traders and Hawkers Association and Manjung Municipal Council to ensure that no traders took advantage to raise prices of goods and services according to their whims.