Budget 2014 – Making it work
Mohsin Abdullah, Fz.com
ONE thing’s for sure, the 2014 Budget cannot be called an election budget. If not for anything else, then it’s because of the timing of the announcement itself i.e. it came after the country had held the general election. Obviously.
That made it an “after election” budget. So the government need not have to worry about the possibility of losing votes due to painful measures to be taken. Very unlike election Budgets, where goodies and sweeteners rule.
In fact a day before tabling the Budget, Finance minister cum PM Datuk Seri Najib Razak had warned that the government would “avoid populist measures that undermine economic stability.”
And he went on to say: “Some measures may not be popular now but over the medium term what is good for the economy is also good for the people”.
So we braced ourselves for the “unpopular measures”. And it came, the main one being the introduction of the GST. This is not much of a surprise as it was expected, to say the very least. In fact, PAS Youth held an anti-GST demo in front of parliament before Najib delivered his Budget speech.
Still, despite being an after-election Budget, Najib deemed it right to “sugar coat” a little bit. By saying it will be implemented “only” in 2015 and will not involve goods and services used extensively by the rakyat.
Come to think of it, the PM somehow sounded like he was still in election campaign mode saying things like “Putrajaya will be always be defended” and Malaysia was hailed “even by the US secretary of state and Chinese president” who came a-calling recently. And there were “goodies” as well. For civil servants mostly.
Anyway, as for the GST, detractors said the effects will be felt “very soon” with ordinary folks feeling the burden.
True, there will be a GST monitoring committee to be chaired by the second finance minister. And in the words of the PM: “Goods will be constantly monitored”. Ok, enough of GST and inflation.
But then Najib also said: “Consumers should make rational choices, spend prudently and report unethical traders to the authorities.”
I for one wished he had not said that. With the current economic climate, consumers (read rakyat) are feeling the heat enough. To urge us to make rational choices and spend prudently is like rubbing salt into the wound. People are doing just that but are struggling to cope with spiralling prices, high costs and low wages. Yes we have reported unethical traders too. But they continue to be, well, unethical.
And we also learn, courtesy of the 2013/2014 Economic Report released on Budget Day that federal government debt is expected to increase to RM541.3 billion which is 54.8% of the GDP.
“Total government debt is expected to increase mainly due to borrowings to meet financing requirements”, said the finance ministry in the report.
Now, what the government is doing somehow does not gel with what the government wants the rakyat to do.
Making things hotter under the collar, is the endless leakages, wastages as revealed annually by the Auditor-General’s reports.
To DAP’s Tony Pua the Budget “proves the Najib administration is only interested in cutting subsidies and raising tax without any intent to tighten government’s purse strings.”
BN’s Khairy Jamluddin however described the Budget as “responsible, responsive, sustainable and resilient.”
To be fair, there are good measures and the government is trying to do things good and right for the rakyat. As in previous Budgets.
But we have seen in previous Budgets when the government had to come back to parliament seeking approval for extra allocations.
Read more at: http://www.fz.com/content/mohsin-abdullah-budget-2014-%E2%80%93-making-it-work#ixzz2imjrNCis
