Tomorrow when Parliament reconvenes to start the 2009 Budget debate is the first parliamentary test of Datuk Seri Najib Razak as Finance Minister – whether he has a revised 2009 Budget to take corrective measures to shield the country from the world’s worst economic crisis in 80 years so as to enhance competitiveness, boost growth and tamp down inflation.
The first thing Malaysians want to hear from Najib are not platitudes like Malaysia enjoying strong economic fundamentals, financial markets and infrastructure and immunity from external shocks but how the country could be shielded from the worst fallouts of the looming world economic crisis.
Secondly, how Najib proposes to tamp down inflation which had hit a 27-year high largely because of the sharp and unconscionable 41% increase in petrol pump prices in early June.
The price of crude oil has now plunged by almost 50 per cent since striking record high levels above US$147 per barrel on July 11.
The price dropped US$5.61 to US$77.05 a barrel on London’s ICE Futures exchange on Friday.
Energy experts believe prices could go even lower, going down to the US$60 a barrel range.
As Najib has been Finance Minister for 25 days, there is no reason why he is unable to announce a revised 2009 Budget in Parliament tomorrow taking fully into account the sharpest drop of the price of oil in 13 months by lowering the pump prices of petrol.
Furthermore, Malaysians want to know what proactive policy would be pursued in a revised 2009 budget to tamp down inflation to ensure that the lowest price of world crude oil in 13 months is felt and translated into the daily lives of ordinary Malaysians – or as one commentator on my blog put it:
“Does this mean that I wil be able to ask my children’s school van operator to lower the fare from RM100 down to the RM80 previously. Or does this translate to paying RM3.50 for chicken rice from the current RM4.00?”
Or will the 5pack Curry Flavour Maggie Mee which increased from RM2.59 at the end of 2007 to RM2.89 in January 2008 and now costs RM3.99 come down in prices?
If Najib has no revised 2009 Budget for Parliament tomorrow, he would have failed his first test as Finance Minister after more than three weeks since Sept. 17.