Fuel Price Hikes Not To Significantly Affect Bali's Businesses

Denpasar, Bali, May 27 (Antara) - Small and medium-scale businesses in the Indonesian tourist resort island of Bali will not significantly be affected by fuel oil price hikes, a local official said. "We have the experience in the past when fuel oil prices were raised. It did not affect small businesses too much. They were able to maintain conducive growth and even grew well," I Dewa Nyoman Patra, the head of Bali`s Cooperatives and Small Scale Enterprise Service, said here on Monday. He said he would not, however, rule out the possibility of small effect but it would not last long and the normal condition would return again. Therefore, the local cooperative service chief reminded small and medium scale businesses of the need to remain efficient in their production so that their business would continue to survive. "The production cost could be made efficient so that businesses would not increase commodity prices that will burden consumers," I Dewa Nyoman said. He said that if the prices of their products increased too high it would threaten the survival of their business. He admitted that businesses faced slight increase in the production cost due to an increase in transportation spending. "But we could not yet made an estimate on how high businesses will raise the prices of their products," he added.