Shadow budget direct aid is safe from abuse...

Pakatan’s budget committee today said that the direct assistance measures in their shadow budget will neither balloon the budget nor lead to abuse as their assistance programmes are targeted to specific groups and has strict criteria on whom it is allotted to.

“It will be targeted to specific groups who really need assistance. Specific criteria is listed in the budget document,” said PKR strategist Rafizi Ramli (left).

He was speaking at a briefing by the Pakatan budget committee to the media in Parliament house today, to explain about the shadow budget announced yesterday.

They agreed that this is unlike similar “assistance” in BN policies and budgets which they themselves have often pointed out as being abused as it is applied across the board, often benefitting the already affluent more than those who are really in need.

The panel members also set aside allegations by BN leaders that their budget is impossible to be funded.

“If they say that there is no money to fund our budget, I say that this is funny and ridiculous as the BN themselves will most likely table a larger budget,” said Rafizi.

The committee also denied that their budget is mainly a populist measure.

“Yes it is ‘populist’ in that it is aimed to reach out at the largest numbers of Malaysians,” quipped DAP strategic director Liew Chin Tong (right), who also joined Rafizi at the briefing.

Rafizi further explained that other than in the sense that their budget is geared to reach the majority of the population, the 60 percent hovering at or around the poverty threshold, their budget “is not populist in that it is not spending money we don’t have just to get votes but is based on economic means and objectives.”

‘Increasing buying power of bottom 60 percent’

The objective of their budget, he said, is not to buy votes by throwing goodies and digging the nation further into the red but to strengthen the economy by benefitting the bottom 60 percent and increase their buying power, and hence encourage local consumption.

PAS strategic director Dzulkefly Ahmad (left) posited that the local consumption will stimulate domestic demand and help the economy as opposed to the mega projects that the BN are fond of initiating.

Unfortunately such mega projects, he said, often only put money in the pockets of cronies.

Amongst the contents of the shadow budget are funds for “direct assistance” to groups like the elderly and homemakers. Some have questioned such measures as being populist and also wondered if the assistance would lead to abuse and balloon the budget as it was thought to be across the board for all the groups mentioned without specific criteria.

BN leaders including former premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad has labelled the budget as merely the product of Pakatan’s fleeting imagination and cannot be practically funded.

source:malaysiakini

Forum Belanjawan Alternatif 2012

Mahathir ooi... hang baca dak lagi budget PR?? Kalu tak baca lagi, cuba hang dok diam sat...

cheers.