Mustapa promises income structure review

KUALA LUMPUR: A review of the income structure of Malaysians will be conducted, says Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed.

“The review will take into account, among others, the changes in income and expenditure structures, cost of living, demographics, and location of households.

“The new categories of household income will further strengthen policy drafting and improve the delivery of services to targeted groups,” the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Economy) said when answering a question raised by Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim (PH-Port Dickson) in the Dewan Rakyat yesterday.

He said the review comes under the midterm review of the 12th Malaysia Plan and would be based on the Statistics Department’s Household Income and Basic Amenities 2022 survey.

He added that 92,000 households are being interviewed under the survey, with the review of household income groups to be done by the first quarter of 2023.

At present, Mustapa said that there are currently 2.91 million households in the B40 group, involving households with a monthly income of less than RM4,850.He added that there were also 2.91 million households in the M40 group, involving monthly household income of between RM4,850 and RM10,959. There are 1.46 million households in the T20 group, where the monthly income is above RM10,960.

As for the hardcore poor, Mustapa said that there was an increase in their numbers because of the Covid-19 pandemic period, with the percentage under this category rising from 5.6% before the pandemic began in 2020, to 8.4%.

However, he said this has gone down since April 2021, when the economy started opening up, with unemployment also gradually decreasing to 3.7% from 5.3%.

“For example, the data used to measure hardcore poor, based on recipients under e-Kasih, had drastically reduced from 262,000 recipients last year to 130,000 as at Sept 15,” he said.

Mustapa said the inflation rate was at 4.7% in August, compared to 4.4% in July.