Budget Day. The hall is packed. Najib in purple baju Melayu, has his special teleprompter Obama style. This is a smaller budget of RM267 billion.
BN guys are not giving Najib any meaningful claps when Najib boasts our successful economic growth at 4.5%.
Najib insists all is rosy and great, despite challenges. He boasts that he has managed to bring down deficit for 2015 to 3.2%. He says poverty rate under him is at all time low at 0.6%. He has also created 1.8 million new jobs and kept very low unemployment rate at 2.9%. He said 5 million people in rural helped by better infrastructure. He also said millions of people enjoyed BR1M under him. To all these boasts, someone quipped syiok sendiri-lah.
Najib says GST is the cornerstone of his legacy. How clever he is to push for GST just in time when prices of oil dropped. He said GST is a blessing and that he will increase more items to be zero rated. Some medicine will have no GST. Phone card no GST. Sounds fantastic so far but what he hasn’t said is that total GST collection for 2016 is expected to increase to a whopping RM39 billion. This is stated in his official projected govt revenue document at page 7.
That means every single Malaysian, from baby to grandmothers will be forking out RM1,300 each to GST next year. So a family of 5 will pay out RM6,500 a year in GST for 2016. Thank you Najib, I am sure the people’s love for you and your handling of 1MDB will increase 10 fold. We are so lucky to have him as Finance Minister, the champion of GST.
The budget is entering it’s very boring stage. Nobody from BN is clapping for the last 20 minutes.
A joke with Najib in this purple outfit is being circulating amongst MPs. Could he be preparing to face the same fate as the other purple shirt guys? Karma?
Najib says he is saddened last year when a major flood hit Kelantan. Therefore he will allocate more funds in this budget to help. But I remember, wasn’t he playing golf with Obama when 100,000 people were affected by the same floods he now feel so terribly sad about?
On BR1M, Najib will “increase” BR1M by an additional RM50 for all groups. So those getting RM950 now will get RM1000, those getting RM750 will get RM800. Thats just a 5 to 6.6% increase. Frankly speaking, that will probably just cover partially some inflation costs not even the GST! It’s a completely empty gesture.
In winding up, Najib in an attempt to be conciliatory says, we are all the same. We have weaknesses and good things. Err none of us had RM2.6 billion deposited into our personal bank account.
After closing his speech, all Opposition MPs stood up to send Najib a message, where is the RM2.6B?
