We already know that petrol subsidy is going to be a thing of the past for most, unless you fall under the B40 (below 40) category (i.e people who earns the lowest) or live in Sabah and Sarawak.

You can check if you're eligible for targeted subsidy here, but if you don't receive the Bantuan Sara Hidup, it's likely that you are not.

According to some reports, the M30 (middle 30) group may also be eligible for some subsidy, but no announcements regarding that has been made so far.

New subsidy structure

The new targeted subsidy programme was announced during the recent budget, but the update is that the price of RON95 petrol will increase by 1 or 2 sen EACH WEEK till it reaches market price.

This new scheme will reportedly start beginning January 2020.

This was announced by the Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs deputy minister Chong Chieng Jen during parliament session last week.

We tried looking through the internet to figure out what "market price" is but couldn't find any that didn't involve complicated math, which is beyond us. (Hey, there's a reason we got into writing and not some high-paying jobs).

Lucky for us, the guys at automotive site Paul Tan are a little bit smarter and mentioned in this article that the market price for RON95 in November was RM2.36 per litre.

For a while now, the price of RON95 petrol has been at RM2.08 per litre, so the subsidy is about RM0.28 per litre.

Assuming the market price remains the same, it'll take 3.5 to 7 months for the price of RON95 petrol to hit market price, so we have that long to figure out how to deal with the extra expenses and if taking public transportation will be a better option.