YOURSAY | Country with huge subsidies may ultimately go broke

YOURSAY | A country with huge subsidies may ultimately go bankrupt

PM: M’sia’s subsidies expected to surpass RM81b this year

Apanama is back: The subsidies given by the government to the rakyat including electricity, fuel, and food are expected to exceed RM81 billion this year.

Prime Minister-cum-Finance Minister Anwar Ibrahim appears to be really proud of it because it helps people.

PM Anwar, a country with huge subsidies may ultimately go bankrupt. You and your team are not doing anything at all for the last 10 months as far as subsidies for addiction are concerned.

You need to go beyond the rationalisation of subsidies. The way you explain it is too simplistic. Your approaches are too simple.

Instead of rationalisation, you need to find ways to reduce the cost of living and totally cut down some of the subsidies.

PM Anwar, at the moment, the cost of living is the real root cause and it has ‘hijacked’ you and our economy to the level that we need to spend more than RM81 billion.

This is on top of our current RM1.5 trillion debt hanging over every Malaysian citizen’s head.

Your job is to reduce the subsidies, say, around RM40 billion for the year 2024, and RM30 billion for the year 2025. In five years’ time, the subsidy amount should be below RM10 billion.

You and your team should break your heads and find solutions for this menace and nuisance subsidies which actually impeded our development over the decades.

PM Anwar, you are going to spend more than RM81 billion this year on top of our trillion-dollar debt. It will be game over economically for our country.

You need to get outside help to manage our economy and finance. What is your Hassan Marican advisory group doing? I do not see anything tangible coming out of the group for the last months.

It has been getting worse since you took over last November. Don’t be proud of your speech. It is nothing besides spelling a picture of doom for our country’s future.

BusinessFirst: Well, there goes the ringgit. I expect it to drop further as Malaysia is living beyond its means and being too dependent on oil and natural resources.

The problem with Anwar is, he is no different from all the other PMs in how they view the economy.

There are too many big issues which he is aware of, but he is unwilling to make the hard decisions on the solutions he already knows.

All we have is a little cut here and there, and much talk about how the fight against corruption (if there is indeed one) will solve all our problems.

When you are going bankrupt because you have too big a housing loan, car loan, or credit bills to pay for the latest iPhone, and the holiday you took with your wife and kids to Korea, reducing the costs of groceries or buying a cheaper handphone plan will not do much.

The sad thing is that even if we win the fight against corruption, the misallocation of resources and misalignment of economic objectives based on continued discriminatory practices based on race are much bigger issues that need to be solved.

Yet, the response to this is that “we will lose the elections”. This is the sum total of the brightest hope in Malaysian politics in the 1990s. Whether you win or lose elections only.

You can win elections like former Singapore PM Lee Kuan Yew, who did it handsomely for decades by making the right decisions and convincing the people.

Soft easy options of sweeping the problem under the carpet are not sustainable in the long run.

BOBBYO: This issue should not be politicised. It has been years and every prime minister who sits in Putrajaya makes promises to fulfil this pledge.

It has been years and this promise to fulfil it moves at a snail’s pace. Even now, Anwar, the 10th PM, is making exactly the same moves.

Meanwhile, those Sabah and Sarawakian politicians who are supposed to get the MA63 agreement implemented sit in their positions enjoying their perks and facilities.

They are not serious about getting the agreement implemented. All is just political talk. Four years will pass and, by that time, a few more facilities will be approved, but not the full agreement.

Talk and more talk is what the PM is good for. For 10 months, he has been busy fighting to secure his position. It has been nothing but bouts and bouts of politics the people have experienced.

What about fighting corruption that is draining the nation’s resources? There is no sincerity in wanting to clean this nation of this scourge.

Clean up the MACC. Revive it under a new leader who is not tainted, if Anwar is serious about fighting corruption. If not, it remains empty talk.

Monopolies. Start by dismantling all the rice, bread, sugar, vegetables, or even importing of basic necessities monopolies.

Highways and tolls. It is time to redo or readjust all these prices of tolls. How many of these operators - cronies - have recouped their cost and are now milking the public daily?

Why are 90 percent of Malaysians still subsidised? Where is our middle class? It should compromise at least 20 to 30 percent of the population.

It should mean only 60 percent of Malaysians may still need subsidies. Not every Malaysian.

The people are getting fed up with all these colourful speeches. They want to see results.

BluePanther4725: Malaysia needs to cut costs by following the steps below:

1. Reduce the pension amount of civil servants, which is now 60 percent of their last drawn salary. This is a huge burden to our country and it only benefits a segment of the population.

Our civil servants are given way too many benefits for the work they do. Civil servants should be placed into the non-pensionable Employees Provident Fund scheme eventually.

2. Reduce the allowances, benefits, and pensions for ministers, senior government officials, and MPs. They should be serving the country, not the country serving and enriching them.

3. Make the rich pay more tax and tax the GLCs and big corporations more. The EU model is a good one, taxing the rich more to benefit society.

4. Cut off corruption and wastage at all levels. Corruption and wastage are still very rampant in all GLCs, e.g. there are overseas study trips, meetings in luxury hotels, changing new systems every year, unnecessary projects, renovations, and purchases.

The unity government needs to make reforms to improve our economy.

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