Mini-Budget or Major-Leakage? Where’re the Goodies?
Najib Razak who will become Malaysia’s sixth Prime Minister in less than a month has revealed the much talked about mini-budget today.
Make no mistake about it because going by the quantum of the budget it’s more like a major-budget instead of a mini-budget – a whopping RM60 billion to be spent over two years, 2009 and 2010. But why the extraordinary RM60 billion which is equivalent to 9% of the country’s GDP (gross domestic product) and why spread over two years? Didn’t this Finance Minister claims the country won’t going into recession come rains or shines? Wouldn’t this tantamount to a tight slap onto his face for twisting the facts about the nation’s economy? Maybe he was as clueless as his boss Abdullah Badawi about economy 101 but he can always read the blogs to get some ideas *grin*, can’t he?
The figure RM60 billion is indeed very attractive in title but were there any substances in bringing cheers to the people on the street or at least to attract investments? I think Najib is trying to play safe after his earlier arrogance that the country was insulated from the global recession which saw his balls nailed on the wall for public view. If you read the mini-budget Najib admitted that despite 2009’s original budget of RM206 billion plus the first stimulus package of RM7 billion plus this second stimulus package (also known as mini-budget) of RM60 billion, the country can only afford to see GDP growth of merely negative 1% to positive 1% for 2009. But we still do not know if this GDP (-1% to +1%) growth requires all the RM60 billion to be spent in 2009, forget about the multiple "thrusts" proposed.
