Subsidised?

I read an awesome article someone forwarded to me today. Some pundit did an incredible job on elaborating the dilemma of the Rakyat from the recent price increase of petrol, and some calculations on whether the pricing was debatable. He even poke on the rebate issue, which sum is meagre.

I did not want to copy and paste the entire article here, cause it's lengthy and I'm not very sure of its copyright. On and off he kept stressing that as an oil producing nation, increasing the price of petrol was not the best decision. And the government's excuse of us still enjoying the cheapest petrol in the region was laughable.

Ok, and the best part of the article was when the writer gave this example (I rephrase the entire thing for easier understanding.) :

"Let's say the market value of a fish is $15. A fisherman caught a fish in the sea and sell it to you for $10. Then he claim to have subsidised $5 off the actual price to sell it to you.

So to think about it, did the fisherman earn $10 or did he lose $5 from selling the fish?"

As an oil exporting nation, we produce oil. The government can set the price just like the fisherman. Then they compare the price they set with the market price (which in this case the US oil barrel), and they claim they have subsidised the petrol price in Malaysia just like the fisherman.

Very controversial. O_O