Making Sense Of Budget 2021’s Ethnic Fault Lines

An extensive range of federal programmes are to be funded to help people receive basic income (such as Bantuan Prihatin cash transfers and minimum wage), primary and secondary schooling, healthcare, and social protection. Covid-19 responses have expanded these or introduced new measures, such as the wage subsidy and loan moratorium. All of the above largely operate on the basis of equality – that Malaysians, regardless of ethnicity, religion, gender or other identifiers, have the right to access these.

Budget allocations are not broken down by ethnicity, and doing so in the annual budget process would not necessarily be practical or constructive. We can take assurance that Bumiputeras and non-Bumiputeras, alike, are being assisted. But we must also be mindful of the purpose of this massive range of assistance to provide basic needs. 

This distinction is important, because the programmes that designate Bumiputeras as the predominant or exclusive beneficiary pursue a different set of objectives. This range of policies revolves around promoting the group’s upward mobility and participation in higher socioeconomic levels; chiefly, through higher education and skills development; entrepreneurship; micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) growth; professional and managerial employment; and wealth ownership. Regardless of one’s agreement – or vehement objection – to these policies, their designated role and scope as well as their location in the budget, must be acknowledged. These programmes are mainly targeted at the aspiring or emergent Bumiputera middle class, not so much the poor. 

In other words, enormous chunks for Bumiputera-centric programmes and small morsels for others do not mean the Bumiputera poor are being helped while the non-Bumiputera poor are being ignored.

Now we can delve into some specifics of Budget 2021. The budget speech sets out the agenda and content for debate, and it throws both information and confusion into the mix. Budget speeches have not helped the rakyat understand the scope of public assistance and ethnically-targeted programmes. 

This habit of using the finance minister’s pinnacle moment to broadcast the government’s championing of Bumiputera causes, while sprinkling a few assurances for minorities, leads to the false impression that the Bumiputera poor are being helped twenty times more than the non-Bumiputera poor. 

What we can say with more certainty is that there is a disparity between the allocations for Bumiputera-targeted programmes and allocations that specify other groups, as summarised in the chart below. Clearly, the system is a deeply embedded one that all ruling coalitions in recent years follow. In fact, the breakdown barely differs between Barisan Nasional (Budget 2018), Pakatan (2019 and 2020) and PN (2021). 

At the risk of belabouring the point, I must reiterate the importance of not equating these figures with the amounts of funding for needy Bumiputeras versus needy non-Bumiputeras. The B40 and M40 of all groups substantially benefit through basic assistance in income, health, education and social protection.