The East Asia Summit (EAS) region is still experiencing significant growth in energy demand, especially in the form of electricity, at faster rates than the world average. This is mainly driven by industrialisation, urbanisation, motorisation and increases in per capita income (ERIA, 2015). Investment in energy infrastructure in this region is not likely to be satiated in the coming decades (IEA, ...

The petroleum subsidy alone was over RM20 billion, which corresponds to around 10 percent of the total government expenditure. Malaysia’s fiscal deficit was 4.5 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in 2012, and the government aims to reduce it to 3 percent by 2015 and to 0 percent by 2020. The country has already started implementing policies to phase out the fuel subsidies. In December 2014, ...