PETALING JAYA: The increase in prices of goods has nothing to do with the ethnicity of the traders, said Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

He said, instead, the root cause of the problem should be identified in order to solve the problem, adding that there are Indian and Malay traders who did not reduce the prices.

"This is not about Chinese, Malay or anyone else. This is about goods, not only goods sold by Chinese.... Indian, Malays also raised price, they don’t bring the price down.

"This is not about Chinese or Malay, this is about oil prices going down but goods prices are not going down," he told reporters here.

The former prime minister was commenting on a recent statement by Agriculture and Agro-based Industry Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob who allegedly called on Malay consumers to boycott Chinese businesses that deliberately kept their prices high.

Ismail Sabri's comment on social media has since been deleted.





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