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peterbllee
Jun 2, 2022

This πŸ“ story is about what the Prime Minister of Singapore mentioned during an official visit to Japan
The funny thing is that the πŸ“he was talking about has nothing to with Japan but was because of Malaysia.

Malaysia consist of West Malaysia  and 2 states Sabah and Sarawak which made up East Malaysia.

Singapore together with the states in West Malaysia made up a country known as Malaya.

The leaders of the state of Singapore did not agree with discriminatory policies that favoured the Malays. 

Singapore decided to break away from the other states of Malaya to become an independent country Singapore.

The other states joined with Sabah and Sarawak to become Malaysia.

Malaysia is a resource rich country with oil, tin and a lot of land cultivated with rubber, oil palm and other crops.

Singapore is a small country with no natural resources other than its people and its strategic position on the trade route between Eastern countries like Japan & China and Western countries eg those in Europe.

For several years the parity between the Singapore $ and the Malaysian currency was 1:1

In spite of having  no natural resources, Singapore did much better economically than Malaysia and the current exchange rate of the 2 currencies is S$1 : RM4.2

Since Singapore does not have much land, much of the food that Singapore consumes come from Malaysia.

34% of the πŸ“ consumed in Singapore comes from Malaysia. Recently Malaysia stopped exporting πŸ“to Singapore.

The decision to stop exporting πŸ“ to Singapore is not because of political differences or jealousy about the superior economic success of Singapore.

Increase in the cost of animal feed has caused the price of pork to increase.The government of Malaysia do not care about the big increase in price of pork because the majority race do not eat pork on religious reasons.So pork eaters had to eat more πŸ“ which is much cheaper than pork causing the demand of πŸ“ in Malaysia to go up.

πŸ“ is a very important part of the diet of the majority race so there is price control for πŸ“.

πŸ“ producers in Malaysia were incurring losses because of higher costs.

Supply chain problems has caused a huge increase in the price of πŸ“ feed.

The minimum wage in Malaysia was raised by 25% from RM1,200 per month to RM1,500 per month.

If you are a πŸ“ producer in Malaysia, what would you do?

Will you increase the production of πŸ“ to meet the higher demand? 

Or will you reduce the production of πŸ“ in order to reduce your losses because the selling price of πŸ“ is capped?

Malaysia itself had a shortage of πŸ“ and could not export any to Singapore.

What did the Prime Minister of Singapore allude to when he said that this time it is πŸ“ but next time it could be something  else or bigger?

The supply chain problem of πŸ“ is because of mismanagement.

What if due to mismanagement of water resources Malaysia cannot provide water to Singapore?

Singapore is such a small country that it does not have the catchment area to collect enough rain water for its needs.

πŸ“ is something πŸ‘¬πŸ‘« can live without. Water is a necessity of life.

What has Singapore done regarding water?

Besides the desalination of sea water, Singapore treats sewer water so thoroughly that it can be drunk.

The Prime Minister of Singapore has publicly drunk bottled sewer water that Singapore produces to prove that it is safe to drink such water.

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