I recently wrote something about the budget and not to say that it was bad but its nothing great to celebrate about la. Today, i came accross a super interesting article!
This article astonish me so much that its difficult to believe that it is true. Can you imagine, if your dad say to you, "Hey, i got a raise today. From today onwards, we are to have a improve spending power of 10%!" YAY! BUT....
What if he LIED! jeng jeng jeng jeng....
Behold Citizens of Malaysia....
It is our neighbour that sniffed out something rotten from the candy jar and now the question, did he lied so the budget looks good? or was it a slip of a moment? or even worst, did the Finance Minister actually READ the Budget or was he merely reading a speech prepared by one his many writers?
So what is the problem??
On the 7th of September, the FM announced:
124. Government expenditure will continue to focus on capacity building to support sustainable economic growth through provision of infrastructure, public facilities, education and social services, including health and welfare of Malaysians. For the strategies and programmes which I have announced, I proposed that, a sum of RM176.9 billion be appropriated in 2008 Budget, 10.9% higher compared with 2007. Of this, RM128.8 billion is for Operating Expenditure while RM48.1 billion for Development Expenditure.
but on the 8th of September, TheStar the subsequently ran this story with the following incerpt
Now, i am no Economist or Financial analyst or whatever you call those guys who actually does all of these kinda of stuff but if you apply logics like what we IT guys are used to do, its very simple.A total of RM168.8bil has been allocated under Budget 2008 – an increase of 2.5% over 2007. Of the total, RM128.8bil is for operating expenditure and the balance RM40bil for development expenditure.
First, if you take note RM176.9b minus RM168.8b does equals to RM8.1b which is the same amount if you subtract RM48.1b with RM40b. So, I am guessing what happened was, initially the FM announced the national budget to the public for RM176.9b and for some unknown reasons was later reduced by RM8.1b.
I've searched both articles for anything worth RM8.1b and couldn't find any and even if they do, there is a descrepancy because initially the developement expenditure was expected to be RM48.1b and one day later it was reduced to RM40b!
So, i dig deep.
126. For Development Expenditure, the largest allocation of RM20.6 billion is for the economic sector comprising agriculture, industry and infrastructure sectors. A sum of RM15.6 billion is allocated to the social sector encompassing education, health and housing. The security sector is given RM7 billion, while administration is provided with RM2.9 billion and for Contingencies, RM2 billion.If you add all of these up, it will come up to RM8.1b. So i thought, could it be that it is a simple mathematical error, that someone from The Star assume that the Developement Expenditure was RM40b, add it with the Operational Expenditure and it became RM168.8b? Possible - maybe....
When i was looking at the chart on TheStar and...
a third figure appeared: RM157,496B! although it had a little star saying it excludes Contigency reserve which is only RM2b, Ok, So we add it up to RM159.5b.
Let's just take one example, Economic Services. According to the Budget RM20.6b is allocated. Accoring to this chart, it makes 10.6% of the budget. So the question now is which figure do i take to calculate the amount of 10.6%? Anyway, let's try all....
So,
0.106 X RM159.5b = RM16.907b
0.106 X RM168.8b = RM17.89b
0.106 X RM176.9b = RM18.75b
So which one is it la!! Shit, i don't know man!
As far as i am concern now, the budget is as good as non-existence. Everything that is being publish by the media so far contradicts one day from another. And why is this is sniffed out by our neighbour and not ourselves? You mean to tell me that no financial analyst in a country with a population of 22million people bothered to ask some questions and some 4 million people accross a river did!
Something is wrong and we as the citizens should be concern. Either the FM is not doing his job or someone is pulling an Ocean's 11.
This is also highlighed by Jeff Ooi
