Post-Budget Jottings and Scribblings

A Kadir Jasin

بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيم

PREAMBLE: Views expressed herein are entirely mine. I am writing in my personal capacity as a blogger. It has nothing to do with whatever position I may hold.

Unaffordable: Property glut is getting worse

IT has been a while the Kedai Kopi Assembly (KKA) has not been convened. Members are busy. Some have even gone on to become ministers and deputy ministers after the May 9 General Elections.

Some are as easy as ever to meet or exchange WhatsApp messages while others have surrendered to officialdom and are difficult to reach.

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For those who we can easily meet, we advise them directly. Nobody has to know. But for those who are hard to meet or to reach, we advise them publicly. Everybody knows.

A former minister of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s 1^st administration (1981-2003) asked me who drafted the 2019 Budget and the budget speech of Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng.

He said he received feedback that Treasury officials were not involved instead and the Budget was the handiwork of the “12^th floor boys (and girls)”.

I am not very sure if the 12^th floor is where the Finance Minister’s office is situated. I have been there only once.

But when I accompanied Chairman of the Council of Eminent Persons (CEP), Tun Daim Zainuddin, to Affin Hwang Capital investment conference in Kuala Lumpur, on Nov. 8, I heard him saying that the Finance Ministry in particular and the government in general have many clever people.

He then pointed in the direction of Dr Ong Kian Ming, Deputy Minister of International Trade and Industry, who was present. I have not the slightest doubt that Dr Ong is a clever chap.

Back to the angry former minister, he argued that budget is a highly confidential document as it involved taxes and critical policies. As a general rule, even ministers are not involved or are in the know. They are only generally briefed about it.

But he noticed that a deputy minister had gone on television to discuss the budget before it was presented. Maybe it happened by mistake. Thus he wondered who else outside the Treasury were involved.

What this former minister is driving at is that confidentiality is important when planning and drafting the budget, and that the civil servants must be given due respect and recognition.

Crowd Funding

Another example of a possible “leak” is the crowd funding for housing. The budget was delivered on Friday and on Sunday the parties believed to have submitted the proposal revealed themselves to public.

While it is customary for the government to accept proposals from the public, the manner the people-to-people funding was made public exposes the government to allegation of cronyism and nepotism.

Yes Finance Minister can announce this as a policy. But the right way to go about doing this is to request for proposals from as many parties as possible so that the government has many options to choose from.

Of course we want this project to succeed. But this is the first ever such financing scheme in the world and we cannot stop the people from wondering and asking questions.

A Singapore-based fund manager commented: “I read this property crowd funding thing. There is no such thing as get-fixed-quick scheme. Usually these schemes end up badly with poor moms and pops losing money and ultimately government bailout like the sub-prime.

“I hope Malaysian government looks at this carefully and not allow unscrupulous businessmen make money off the unsuspected.”

Well, I am still essentially an atomic person. Although I have gone partially digital, I still visit my bank managers, make phone calls to check my bank balance and issue cheques to pay my credit card bills.

These online banking, crowd funding and cloud storage things still do not convince me.

On that score, I salute the PNB for bringing back the passbook for its unit trust funds. Apparently going digital and paperless did not go down well with the pensioners and the old-timers who incidentally are also its high net worth customers.

On the hot subject of housing, the real issue is affordability. Prices have skyrocketed but incomes have not. Profiteering makes the situation worse.

Daim recalled at the Affin Hwang conference that back in the sixties he sold a three-bedroom link house in Taman Maluri, Kuala Lumpur, for RM40,000. Today the price could be as much as RM500,000.

I will leave the clever people at Bank Negara and the Economic Planning Unit to figure this out. But I think if we solve the problem of low wages and incomes we will solve the housing problem.

Technology helps. There must be better and cheaper ways of building or, shall I say, mass producing affordable homes. I understand that at least one large government-linked property developer is experimenting with the idea of manufactured houses and apartments.

On the political front, many people had expressed their views on the Parti KeAdilan Rakyat’s leadership election. Thank you for the feedback. I think there are other people who are more competent who are already commenting on this subject.

In the meantime the Education Minister, Maszlee Malik continues to bewilder me with his actions – the latest being the appointment of the former PNB chairman, Tan Sri Abdul Wahid Omar, as chairman of the UKM board.

Maybe Maszlee wasn’t aware that Abdul Wahid was removed from PNB or he didn’t agree with the latter’s removal. Or just that Maszlee is too clever for the comprehension of ordinary mortals.

Wallahuaklam.