Former Economy Minister Datuk Seri Rafizi Ramli has launched a value-meal eatery named Kesum, a social enterprise initiative aimed at providing affordable and reasonably priced meals for the public.
Rafizi said the initiative, launched on Saturday (Nov 8), is part of ongoing efforts to tackle the cost-of-living challenges faced by Malaysians.
00:00So this is our second experimental outlet within the bigger objective of challenging
00:11the status quo of food inflation. As an economy, not just Malaysia, anywhere in the world,
00:20the challenge is always to manage inflation because of living is high anywhere in the
00:25world. And if you look at our inflation, the biggest basket of goods and services that
00:35contribute to inflation every year is food inflation. The raw material is manageable,
00:42is the cooked food that is usually twice or sometimes three times higher than the inflation
00:50of all the other goods and services. And this is even more complicated in our economy
00:57because if you look at the spending pattern of the lower household income group, they spend
01:04disproportionately higher on food compared to M40 and especially T20. So government can
01:16focus on policy but that takes a while, that's number one. For example, in order to reduce
01:23food inflation, the natural option is to scale up the supply of local food. Even then it
01:31is complicated because we don't have the economies of scale and usually our produce can be more
01:38expensive than the ones imported. So that will take some time for us to manage that. But what
01:45I feel is missing in our society is the other part of interventions that could have happened
01:53much faster, which is number one consumerism and number two is the market forces. When it
01:59comes to consumerism, while we have consumer groups in the country, we have not been able to
02:07really move our society to challenge continuous food inflation. And more often than not, we tend
02:18to normalise food increases. If generally the market, the operators say that a cost of coffee
02:29is 14 ringgit is 14 ringgit. We complain about it, but there's hardly any impact on the demand
02:37for a 14 ringgit coffee. And because of that, you know, because of slower consumerism activities
02:50in the country that can challenge the normalisation of food inflation, we end up where we are.
02:58The other component is the market forces to challenge operators to make sure that there will always
03:07be competition that offer better and lower prices. So that's what we are trying to do here.
03:16Of course, we cannot operate as a normal business. And one model that we've been looking at through
03:23IU Malaysia is how do we convince society and also scale it up so that more people are willing
03:32to come together, different parties and different partners, to work on social enterprises. And the
03:39difference is that because people who come together and put their capital for a social enterprise
03:44like this, the expectation for return is lower because the objective is always social in nature.
03:51And secondly, because the expectation for return is lower, then the business should be more
04:02cost effective. It can sustain longer. And given all this, it should be able to offer and survive
04:13and survive on a much cheaper price bank. And that's what we are trying to prove with
04:20Kesom today. It offers prices from RM5, RM4 and below. It's almost 50%, I think, cheaper than what you normally get elsewhere.
04:33Of course, the challenge for us is to see if prices are lower, will you get the volume? If you get the volume, then if it's proven to be financially and operationally feasible for the next two or three months, then it allows us to scale it up as you go along to have more of these outlets all over the place.
04:56Because until such a time where outlets that offer this kind of prices have reached the scale in the market, then it will not be able to provide that market forces that can challenge high prices.
05:15So, remember, let's see.
05:16We'll see you next day.
05:17We'll take a look.
05:19We'll keep a look at some of these shortcomings that have already gotten more.
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