KUALA LUMPUR: Khazanah Research Institute’s (KRI) proposal for a more refined measure of income will be considered as part of the 12th Malaysia Plan instead of Budget 2020, Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng said.
“It is too late to include it in Budget 2020 which will be tabled on Oct 11, but maybe we can consider it in the 12th Malaysia Plan.
“To change B40 (income group) to B20 is quite a sensitive matter because some may feel neglected and such.
“But as the government mentioned before, we are serious about reducing the people’s burden through the shared prosperity concept,” he told a media conference after launching the Medical Travel Market Intelligence Conference 2019.
As such, Lim said, the proposal would have to be further scrutinised.
“We want to do this holistically so that no one will feel left out. Of course, we want to help everyone but due to financial constraints, this must be further looked into first,” he said.
Yesterday, KRI in its latest discussion paper, ‘Demarcating Household: An Integrated Income and Consumption Analysis’ made several proposals.
The key takeaways from the discussion paper were the need for a more refined measure of income as the B40 demarcation was a relative measure designed to monitor progress in addressing inequality and distributional concerns.
The report suggested for the government to take into account income disparities in different locations and factoring in household sizes to better compare living standards.