Population growth affects income per capita, not subsidies slash: Shahril

Umno information chief Shahril Hamdan said Subang MP Wong Chen is purposely twisting how the reduced subsidies will affect the rakyat’s income per capita next year.

The government data projecting a reduction in income per capita for next year is due to population growth and has nothing to do with the reduction in expenditure for subsidies, Shahril said.

“Income per capita is simply total income divided by the total population.

“National income is projected to rise 6.2 percent, so the only way per capita income projected is down is because population growth is higher than 6.2 percent. Nothing to do with who gets what.

“Pretty basic. Wong knows but he purposely wants to incite things by claiming that the subsidies have been reduced to the point of causing the income per capita to fall,” Shahril (above) said in a series of tweets on Twitter today.

After Budget 2023 was tabled in Parliament yesterday, Wong highlighted that the government is actually spending less on welfare and subsidies despite the long list of goodies announced.

He said the government is reducing the budget for subsidies and social assistance from RM58.9 billion this year to RM42 billion next year, which is a reduction of RM16.9 billion.

He also panned it as a “budget for the rich”, pointing to the RM94 billion allocated for government projects next year.

There also does not appear to be a “trickle-down” effect from the projects, Wong said, pointing to the government’s projected income per capita for next year, which is expected to reduce by 1.2 percent from RM50,314 to RM49,717.

In his tweets today, Shahril said the allocation for subsidies next year was decreased due to the predicted fall in commodity prices.

“But if you want to be a subsidy champion, let’s take a look at the allocation in Pakatan Harapan’s budget in 2019 and 2020. Was it high?” he said, attaching a screenshot of the Budget 2020 speech text.

In the screenshot, the highlighted speech text states that subsidies were increased to RM24.2 billion.

Shahril also expressed surprise that Harapan appears to want lower development expenditure and increase operating expenditure.

“If the development expenditure is low, they will say we are not developing the country. If development expenditure is high, it’s the contractors who benefit.

“If operating expenditure is low, they will say subsidies are not enough. If operating expenditures are high, they attack the salaries of ministers and civil servants,” he said.

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