New research institute needed to study rising cost of living

Its president, Prof Laily Paim, said thorough studies need to be conducted on consumers' income based on their demographic, and how they spend their money according to their priority.

"We can see how developed countries study the households of citizens year-by-year because they have specific institutes to continuously study the behavior, the trend and what's the priority of any class,” she said in a Pre-Budget 2015 discussion with Agenda AWANI on Sept 6.

"Right now, we don't have any such institute that fully focuses on that matter. We only have assumptions based on random researches.

"If we have an institute that consistently researches consumer behaviour and households year-by-year, we can fully understand the struggles the that the lower 40 percent of the society are dealing with," said Laily.

If the researches were done scientifically, the government could also use the results to make better quality policies, she added.

In the same discussion, Fellow Academy of Sciences Malaysia (ASM) Dr Ahmad Ibrahim concur that Malaysia must have a scientific approach in understanding consumer behaviour and households.

"Our policies must be evidence-based. That is what we call 'scientific approach'. We have a lot of policies in Malaysia but we don’t have any mechanism to get feedback," he said.

He said in Malaysia, there's no major concern placed in researching this topic, which was why we lack analyses in understanding consumer behaviour.

"I hope the government in Budget 2015 can allocate a sufficient amount for research and development so that we can understand better the situation faced by the citizens."

Dr Ahmad said, developed countries spend their Budget on searching and analysing data to understand the status quo.

"By studying all collected data, we can understand if the policies that we have now are effective or not. From there, we can tell if we need to develop new policies."

He said, the ASM is currently working on a Mega Science Sustained National Development that focuses on a scientific approach in providing solutions to have a better, more conducive life environment.