A Rahmah Madani sale is a scheduled government sale of basic groceries at 10 to 30 per cent below market price. Since 9 January 2026 the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Cost of Living (KPDN) has committed to holding one at least three times a month in every state constituency in the country, Bernama reported at the launch, and by 30 June it had held 15,881 of them nationwide, the ministry said. In Sarawak they turn up in three forms: a fixed sale inside a shop, an open-air sale, and a mobile sale that drives to a longhouse or a school hall and sets up for the day.

What the sales actually sell, and how much comes off

The advertised saving is 10 to 30 per cent against the market price of the same item, according to Bernama's account of the January expansion. In May 2026 Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim described the programme as one that had proven capable of prices up to 30 per cent lower than the market.

What is on the tables varies by location. A mobile sale held at Rumah Panjang Jembat in Dit Ulu, Debak, on 5 July 2025 advertised rice, cooking oil, sugar and flour. At a sale in Miri in October 2025, the goods on offer were listed as:

  • rice, sugar and cooking oil
  • Milo and instant noodles
  • eggs, chicken and meat

Those were discounted by up to 30 per cent, Sarawak's Transport Minister, Lee Kim Shin, said on a visit to that sale. He named the B40 and M40 income groups as the target.

How often one runs, and where the date is published

The frequency has been revised upward twice in 2026:

  1. 9 January 2026 — the programme was extended to all 222 parliamentary constituencies, 600 state constituencies and 40 Federal Territory zones, Minister Armizan Mohd Ali said.
  2. January 2026 — three sales a month in each state constituency, with roughly 23,000 events planned for the year, Bernama reported.
  3. 5 May 2026 — the Cabinet agreed to move to weekly sales and raised the year's target to 30,000.

KPDN maintains a PJRM calendar on kpdn.gov.my that is updated as schedules are set. Anwar's stated reason for fixing days and schedules was that buyers should have certainty about where and when goods can be bought.

Why the interior is the expensive part

The binding constraint in Sarawak is not the discount, it is the freight. Deputy Minister Fuziah Salleh told Bernama in March 2026 that the programme sometimes does not reach interior areas because operators will not travel there, and that the ministry was examining whether transport companies could run the sales themselves — firms that already draw a ministry logistics subsidy, appointed as operators.

Two federal allocations sit behind that. In the same account, KPDN put RM67 million into a Port-to-Port scheme shipping staples such as sugar and onions from Port Klang to the main ports at Kuching and Kota Kinabalu, and RM250 million into an Essential Goods Distribution Programme that maintains point-of-sale outlets at 1,570 interior locations, 1,480 of them in Sabah and Sarawak. The ministry has also completed a price stability study and formed a technical working group with federal agencies, state governments and industry.

What a mobile sale looks like when it arrives

The Miri example from October 2025 gives the clearest picture of the mechanics. The sale ran in the hall of SMK Merbau on a Sunday, a venue chosen because the school has close to 3,000 pupils drawn from about 1,500 families nearby. Residents began arriving from 7am, and the hall was large enough to run three sales counters at once. The next stop was set for SM Riam, and an earlier one had been held at Senadin — all within Miri division, the state information department reported.

The longhouse version is shorter and smaller: the Debak sale ran from 9am to 3pm on a single day.

There is also a campus edition. From 2 to 5 July 2025, a state-level Rahmah Madani sale ran at YT Mart, the UiTM Samarahan campus co-operative, organised by KPDN Sarawak with the co-operative and the campus consumer movement, and attended by the state KPDN director, Matthew Dominic Barin. It was aimed at students and university staff, the state information department reported: in Samarahan the target group is not only rural households. These three Sarawak examples date from 2025; they show the formats, not the current schedule.

The numbers behind the expansion

The programme has roughly quadrupled in four years. KPDN's own count runs 6,870 sales in 2023, 12,419 in 2024 and 25,708 in 2025, with the 2026 target revised from 23,040 to 30,000, and 15,881 held in the first six months of 2026 across all 600 state constituencies and all 40 Federal Territory zones, Armizan said on 30 June. The ministry counts 2,695 private retail partners in the scheme.

The sales sit under Payung Rahmah, the ministry's umbrella of cost-of-living measures running since January 2023. Anwar has said the intent is that small traders, rather than large companies, get the selling opportunity, and that the programme does not resolve the underlying pressure on prices.

Sources