Budget 2027: Deliberately avoiding the big picture

The recently announced 2027 national budget, despite containing some pro-people measures, was ultimately a letdown in terms of creating any real, meaningful impact.

These particular measures are simply insufficient to truly uplift the working class’s socioeconomic status against the current backdrop of high living costs.

Most of them will not even come into effect until next year, and for many, they simply cannot afford to wait any longer.

Proposed wages still too low

Sure, there was a minimum wage increase of RM2,000 per month up from RM1,700, but it exempts MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises) with less than RM50m annual sales revenue and only comes into effect in June 2027!

Aside from the disappointing fact that this is far below the deserved RM3,100 per month living wage, I simply do not trust the government to properly enforce them. We do have a decent number of progressive, nice-sounding policies and laws in this country, but their enforcement is extremely lacklustre.

More money, little impact

The budget this time round for higher education and healthcare was RM19.1 bn, up from RM18.6bn last year, and RM47.7bn, up by RM1.2bn from last year respectively.

Notably absent from the higher education’s allocation breakdown, however, was any mention of building more public universities – something our youth desperately need!

Malaysia has many private universities as opposed to public ones, and they all charge very high tuition fees. Many students enrol in them simply because they are unable to secure a spot in the few public universities, and naturally are forced to take on loans to cope with the high fees.

And so, once they graduate, they are already saddled with a lot of debt before even securing their first job, which itself is a huge challenge nowadays.

Add to that the prospect of getting married, renting a house and buying a car, and the financial weight on these young adults’ shoulders becomes too heavy to bear. Is this at all fair for our young generation?

A truly responsible government would attempt to alleviate at least some of that financial burden by allocating sufficient funds towards building more public universities, thereby ensuring that students receive affordable higher education without having a dark cloud of debt hovering over them.

As for the healthcare budget, only RM6.8bn out of the total RM47.7bn was allocated for development expenditure (almost unchanged from the previous year) and is specifically intended for nine new health facilities. It is somewhat a positive step, but again our leaders are not addressing the root cause of the public healthcare crisis: too few public hospitals!

Similar to the higher education conundrum, Malaysia has way more private hospitals than it does public ones, all of which charge exorbitant fees even for consultations and tests.

Most people cannot afford this, and so they instead visit the very few public hospitals in the country, thus causing congestion at these hospitals, long waiting lists for important diagnostic tests and procedures, excessive workload for government nurses and especially doctors, in turn resulting in high stress and even anxiety levels among them.

Small wonder then that you hear of many doctors, especially the more junior ones, either leaving government service or just quitting the medical profession entirely.

By right, the government should allocate more funds specifically for constructing way more public hospitals to holistically solve the problems mentioned above.

Still no love for public buses

Public transport initiatives under Budget 2027 were lacklustre as well, with zero attention given to providing more public buses to address growing traffic congestion nationwide, especially in Penang, the Klang Valley and Johor.

It simply cannot be denied that public buses remain the best solution for tackling traffic jams. And yet, our leaders continue to lack the political will to strengthen this particular sector.

Race-based solutions persist!

Like all the previous national budgets, a narrow-minded, race-based approach was present in this one as well, notably in the form of an increased allocation of RM150m to the Malaysian Indian Transformation Unit (Mitra) with the main aim of developing young ethnic Indian talent.

Instead of having a government agency dedicated to improving the socioeconomic status of the Indian community, why can’t the government establish one to uplift all the people from the lower socioeconomic categories, regardless of their race and religion? Isn’t it much smarter and more comprehensive if a class-based approach is used when allocating funds and launching pro-people initiatives?

Insufficient measures

In terms of the more positive outcomes of this budget, there were minor initiatives including the residents’ income tax reduction by just 1% for those in lower-income categories, increase in tax relief for certain areas, RM400 monthly subsidy assistance for 290,000 smallholders, RM270m allocation to help SMEs attract private capital, and RM160m to boost earnings of ride-hailing and p-hailing (app-based delivery) workers.

While these are no doubt positive relief measures, in the larger context of the working class’s socioeconomic struggles, they fall far short of truly alleviating their struggles, let alone transitioning people up the class ladder.

The income tax for those with incomes exceeding one million annually were increased to 30% as well. While this is an encouraging step, again we have to come back to the poor enforcement issue.

As we know, many in the wealthy class are always looking for sneaky ways to avoid paying their fair share of taxes, notably through the relocation of their companies to offshore tax havens, among other methods.

And I’m fairly certain our authorities’ enforcement levels towards such devious moves remain pretty lax.

Complete exclusion of progressive taxes

As usual, truly impactful measures like increasing corporate taxes and imposing wealth and inheritance taxes were glaringly absent from the budget. Just like its predecessors, the ‘Madani’ government is firmly stuck in its neoliberal capitalist thinking and possesses zero will to impose firmer, fairer taxation against the corporate and wealthy classes.

Frankly, the only thing that is going to save this government from losing in the next election is implementing such measures ASAP, thereby providing it with much-needed funds to significantly uplift the people’s socioeconomic status.

As things stand, the government’s fiscal position remains strained precisely because it is stubbornly reluctant to impose such progressive taxes.

If only it did, it would acquire enough funds to implement a living wage, provide much stronger support to MSMEs, take over and improve living conditions at low-cost flats, provide way more low-cost housing, public hospitals, public universities, public buses, and frequently maintain basic infrastructure nationwide.

Following this, public support for the present administration, which is pretty low, would rise, even pulling in supporters of the opposition, I’d wager.

Over the past few decades, our economic growth and GDP (gross domestic product) have been improving at a desirable pace. Our 2026 economic growth is projected to expand between 4.8 and 5.3%, while our 2027 GDP growth is expected to continue expanding between 4.2 and 5.2%.

And yet, year after year, our national budget disappoints with insufficient funds allocated to truly help the working class.

It is very clear that the monetary gains in our economic and GDP growth are not going to the government via fair taxation or towards helping average people, but instead to the corporate and wealthy classes.

It is high time our leaders act responsibly and genuinely attempt to redistribute the country’s wealth towards the majority of the population instead of merely talking about it. Perhaps then we’ll actually get a truly impactful budget. – Newswav 

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