Budget 2022: Good opportunity for expansionary fiscal policy
SHAH ALAM- Pending hospital projects and healthcare facilities must be completed immediately to ensure Malaysia’s move into the Covid-19 endemic stage is successful.
Panellists during Wacana Sinar’s Special Edition titled Endemic Management for Budget 2022 on Oct 28 agreed that to live comfortably under the new norm, the people must be convinced that the country was well equipped to face future outbreaks and had the ability to control the spread at a baseline.
“We need to have more hospitals, beds and staff because we know when the pandemic hit, we did not have enough of those to cater to the people,” said Parti Pejuang Tanah Air (Pejuang) information chief Ulya Husamuddin during Wacana Sinar’s Special Edition titled Endemic Management for Budget 2022 last night.
Although some have argued the excess of facilities would be a waste since the pandemic was over, Ulya said many have forgotten that Malaysia was set to be an ageing nation by the year 2030.
“We are going to have a lot more older people than youths thus we are going to need these hospitals, beds and staff to be ready for the grey tsunami.
“We have an opportunity to fork out a certain amount of money to allocate it to healthcare. This is the people’s money and should be invested in healthcare first.
“This is what needs to be done in the Budget 2022,” he said. Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (Ideas) chief executive officer Tricia Yeoh agreed that the country was in a good position to have an expansionary fiscal budget now.
However, she questions how the government would finance the large expansion especially if it was much bigger than the previous budgets.
“The government needs to be transparent and accountable to the public as to whether they will get it by borrowing, withdrawing more funds from the national trust fund National Trust Fund (Kumpulan Wang Amanah Negara) or via taxation – what kind of taxes will it be?” she said. Yeoh said public healthcare needs to be a top priority, stating that it was not only the issue of insufficient facilities and equipment but also unfairly disbursed resources.
“The systems were not built so that extra resources could immediately be allocated to the hospitals when required,” she said.
Yeoh said horizontal policies caused miscoordination throughout the entire country, which needs to be immediately addressed.
Meanwhile, Semambu assemblyman Lee Chean Chung said is vital for the Health Ministry to have a medium- and long-term plan to reform the current healthcare problems.
The PKR Treasurer said it all goes back to the right policy and implementation, adding that the monitoring system needed to be beefed to ensure money spent brings value and is delivered to the correct targeted audience.
“Perhaps we need better micromanagement with management people who are good in implementation to action,” he said.
Malaysia’s Budget 2022 will be tabled in Parliament today and anticipated to reflect an inclusive “Keluarga Malaysia” approach, in line with the policies and strategies out in the 12MP.
Finance Ministry has stated that the budget will focus on recovery, rebuilding national resilience and catalysing reform, to drive socio-economic recovery activities and the national development agenda.
Wacana Sinar’s Special Edition is a prelude to the new English portal Sinar Daily, which is set to go live in December! Stay tuned as more comprehensive and interesting content awaits you!
