RM510b Budget: Who really wins? - Tengku Zafrul Abdul Aziz
Former Malaysian Finance Minister Tengku Zafrul Abdul Aziz discusses the 2027 national budget, emphasizing the balance between fiscal discipline and social welfare. He highlights the importance of raising the minimum wage to improve living standards for workers.
Why it matters
Economic policy decisions regarding minimum wage and fiscal deficits directly impact the purchasing power and long-term financial stability of the Malaysian population.
OCTOBER 11 — Every national budget is a tightrope walk above a storm. I know this not from textbooks, but from long nights at the Ministry of Finance when I was the Minister, staring at numbers that never quite add up to everything the nation needs.
Every ringgit is debated and fought over. The relief a struggling family desperately needs now must be weighed, painfully, against the discipline that protects their children’s future.
Budget Madani 2027 walks that tightrope with remarkable steadiness. The total budget leaps to RM510 billion, up from RM470 billion, yet the fiscal deficit is targeted at 3.3 per cent, down from 5.5 per cent in 2022. That is not luck. It is the fruit of courage, of hard choices made when it would have been far easier to spend now and let future generations pay.
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