The business community as well as tax paying Malaysians are likely to be raising their heads in anticipation of the pending release of Budget 2023.
27 Group (27G) hopes that certain areas receive due attention as Malaysia moves out of a period of low economic activity towards greater growth and commercial revitalisation.
Climate Change and Sustainability
With climate change events such as heavy rainfall and flooding becoming increasingly prevalent in Malaysia, government resources will likely be directed towards creating climate resilient infrastructure and improved disaster responsiveness.
The nation will also likely see more attention being paid towards initiatives that improve sustainability practices, such the development of a circular economy adoption strategy in the manufacturing sector as well as low carbon initiatives, aimed at reducing our environmental footprint within commercial and industrial activities.
Financial Welfare Of The Average Citizen
It’s highly likely that there will be greater attention directed towards income growth, job creation and inflationary curbing mechanisms.
With the recent announcement surrounding the increase of the minimum wage earlier this year, there will likely be further inroads made towards income generation for all sectors of society.
The creation of new economy jobs in the digital and 4IR sectors will also likely be a sticking point as the country readies itself for greater technology adoption and the further digitalisation of private and public services.
Covid related supply chain disruptions and the subsequent inflationary pressure on local goods and services will also be major pain point to be addressed by this year’s budget.
Infrastructure Development
27G expects the budget to be lean in this regard, excepting several major projects such as the MRT3 and a few others, as national cashflow is currently a constraint, and the larger infra jobs will require tenders to bank roll the initial 12 to 24 months.
Budget 2023 will also very likely have allocations which provide for the county’s food security concerns, as producers continue to grapple with increased commodity prices and labour shortages created by the recent pandemic and Russo-Ukranian crisis.
It would therefore be good to see measures taken to curb the leakages to food exports and to substitute our dependence on imports with more innovative technological adoption.
Agriculture And Agricultural Technology Sectors
27G hopes to see initiatives that enable greater production capabilities using technology and innovative operations methods, as well as better incentives by the government to the private sector to enter the agriculture and agrifood markets. These initiatives would greatly lend themselves towards addressing the aforementioned labour issues within the sector and associated supply chain disruptions.
Socioeconomic Development Factors
There will likely be greater emphasis paid towards income distribution among the B40 (soon to be B50) segment of society, with a growing need for policies that safeguard the social welfare of the lower incoming earning segments.
They believe that the government will need to take a hard look at the Malaysian GINI coefficient and put in place the necessary measures to ensure that the income disparity index is sufficiently addressed. The Gini Index is a measure of how equal a country’s distribution of income is. It is a score between 0 and 100.
Technological Infrastructure
It is also foreseen major allocations going towards improved technological infrastructure, with the intended rollout of 5G services in the country by DNB being one of the most significant projects in the pipeline.
With the rollout, which will see higher bandwidth and connectivity not only in the city areas but extending towards the rural parts of the country, there will be a need for associated technologies such as digital and analytics software to properly support the network.
Allocations are thus likely to be made to attract businesses and associated technology partners into developing products and services that leverage on the new 5G connectivity.
As a final note with regards to initiatives that we would like to see factored into the budget, we published an article in 2021 on how Pump-Priming through the investment into large scale, nationwide infrastructure projects could be leveraged to create the kind of dynamic momentum needed to re-invigorate the economy.
You can read the article by clicking on the link here.
They expect more allocations to be channeled towards sustainability driven projects and initiatives geared towards climate preparedness.
27G also anticipates a greater emphasis paid towards food security concerns and efforts to be made for reconciling the growing income disparity in the country.
27 Group is a business consultancy and advisory organisation geared towards project development and socioeconomic transformation strengths. We provide project management and master planning services for clients within multiple industries and are also keenly involved in the development of socioeconomic initiatives within the public sector. Our guiding ethos of ‘Rebuilding Humanity’ drives us to deliver transformative projects with the right amount of care and attention, meeting both stakeholder expectations and the essential needs of the wider communities that we serve.
