DAP WELCOMES the denial by Finance Minister Datuk Seri Tengku Zafrul Abdul Aziz today that the date for tabling Budget 2023 in Parliament will be earlier to allow for the 15th General Elections (GE15) to take place. Tengku Zafrul insisted that the Budget will still be tabled on October 28.
The current Cabinet members’ poor performance is due to their obsession with the general elections expected this year. They should instead be focusing on preventing an economic recession next year.
At a time when Malaysia faces a host of economic problems, instead of doing their jobs and designing cogent public policies to address them, Government ministers are running around campaigning and politicking.
There is more attention on UMNO’s demand for early elections and Perikatan Nasional (PN) threat to pull back its support for Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob due to Ismail allegedly breaking his promises, than on pressing economic issues ranging from soaring prices of food and materials, a severe labour shortage, a depreciating ringgit and rising interest rates.
The severity of the global situation can be seen by the technical recession of the US economy over the first two quarters of 2022 and the Bank of England predicting that the UK will be in recession in the final quarter of 2022.
And yet, the Malaysian Government, in its self-absorption with politicking, continues to express optimism that Malaysia can achieve the 2022 projected economic growth of up to 6.3%. Even the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has lowered its 2022 growth target for Malaysia to 5.6% at best.
Meanwhile, the ringgit value continues to decline against the US at RM4.46, a five-year low, and the lowest value on record of RM3.24 to the Singapore dollar.
Despite high oil and palm oil prices, the ringgit continues to depreciate when it should be strengthening. Even when Pakatan Harapan was in power amid low oil and palm oil prices, the ringgit never dropped to such record levels.
Whilst the Government can dismiss the decline in the ringgit vis-a-vis the US dollar due to interest rate hikes of 2.25% by the Federal Reserve Bank, the precipitous drop against the Singapore dollar highlights the recovery risks and weakness of our economy against two of our three largest trading partners.
Policymakers should address this and also quickly overcome the failure of foreign labour to enter Malaysia.
The severe labour shortage has caused RM33.5 bil losses to the palm oil, glove and auto spare parts industry as well as losses of tens of billions of ringgit in other sectors.
Despite promises that Indonesian workers will come in by Aug 1, many businesses are still waiting forlornly. The ministers concerned should focus on facilitating their entry instead of putting up obstacles.
Further, measures to curb rising prices with interest rate hikes have not proven effective; there is no point in continuing with interest rate hikes when it only hurts businesses with higher borrowing costs and does not counter high prices and risks precipitating an economic recession.
National economic interests dictate that GE15 should be held next year, not this year.
The Government should stop its obsession with holding the general elections this year and focus instead on doing its job to prevent the Malaysian economy from falling into a recession in 2023.
Holding GE15 this year at the cost of allowing an economic recession next year is just not worth it. – Aug 7, 2022
Lim Guan Eng is DAP national chairman, Bagan MP and a former finance minister.
The views expressed are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Focus Malaysia.
