Structural economy weaknesses not addressed in Budget 2017
While Prime Minister Najib Razak’s Budget 2017 had plenty of goodies and petty benefits, it however missed out on addressing the structural weaknesses of Malaysian economy, said an opposition lawmaker today.
PKR vice president Tian Chua said Najib’s budget announcements were merely used as a disguise to blanket the real problems that the nation’s economy was facing.
“We are waiting for a direction from a very stagnant economy, coming from the losing of confidence by domestic and international investors.
“We are facing increasing constricted expenditure for development because we do not have revenues. Our exports are down and we did not develop new methods to collect government revenues, besides GST,” he told Berita Daily.
He said the increment of the 1Malaysia People’s Aide (BR1M) was merely an act of “using more band aid to cover more leakages”.
The Batu MP also urged the government to have the courage to face the reality of Malaysia lagging behind in the world’s economical development.
“We have longer history of high growth. We cannot all of the sudden compare with Indonesia or the Philippines, and self praise ourselves. It is not helpful,” he said.
DAP Klang lawmaker Charles Santiago also sang the same tune when he said that the budget was not addressing the issues of productivity, efficiency and the ability of Malaysian companies to fight in and outside the country.
He pointed out that based on the budget, 2017 was going to be very challenging year for the country financially.
“Companies are already saying they are making losses, and their profits have dropped. This is a barometer that Malaysian companies are having problems.
“The budget is not putting money in the economy to push it up further. Nothing is really going to help the economy to deal with the coming crisis,” he said.
He added that together with the lack support from oil revenues, it will be hard to ensure that Malaysia can move without any structural problems to the economy next year.
