A study on perception of rural folks towards fuel's subsidy rationalization: case study of Kg. Menengah Pimping, Membakut / Mohd Hadafie Fiezal Haron and Muhammad Zayn Zharfan Ibrahim

In the developing nation, subsidies are one of the important things to be implemented. This is to help their citizens and the industries in the country itself to survive in daily life and compete worldwide. In the case of our country, Malaysia subsidies are one of the biggest parts in annual budgets. It's aimed to reduce the burden of the citizen and stabilize the imbalance of price in the market especially the price of fuel in this country. Recently, the Government of Malaysia has took a several steps in handling the price of fuel including by reduced the amount of subsidy for RON95, RON97, and Diesel and also by changed the system of fuel price which was currently our government has using Managed Float System that replaced the Automatic Pricing Mechanism. This was due to perceptions and suggestion voiced out by the political parties, representatives and discontentment of the citizens who dependent on the fuel subsidy given by government which was believed they were the parties who feel more burdened due to the increment of the price. This indirectly will cause the cost of the goods and others facilities and basic needs were increased. So, the objectives of this concept paper were to study the perceptions of rural folks upon fuel's subsidy rationalization and to examine the factors that associated the rural folk's perceptions towards fuel's subsidy rationalization. For this concept paper, the researchers were focusing on the rural area which was Kg. Menengah Pimping, Membakut. Hence, a set of 201 questionnaires were distributed in the area mentioned before as to collect the related data.