INTERACTIVE: Interesting facts on Malaysia’s previous budgets

PETALING JAYA: For the average Malaysian struggling to cope with the cost of living, the government’s plans to tackle rising prices and cut inflation are among the key issues in Budget 2024.

Ahead of Budget 2024’s tabling on Friday (Oct 13), The Star takes a closer look at how the country’s previous budgets tracked the rakyat’s bread and butter concerns.

We also delve into some of the more interesting trivia related to the country’s budgets.

These range from the longest budget speech to the most common colour outfit worn by a finance minister in the Dewan Rakyat when presenting the country’s annual spending plan.

Bread and butter concerns over the years

We examined the budgets for the years 2000 to 2023 to get a sampling of how they reflect the rakyat's concerns on prices and cost of living issues.

We did this by calculating the number of sentences or individual points in the speeches which contains at least one mention of three specific terms – inflasi (inflation), harga (price) and sara hidup (livelihood).

In general, we found a rising trend of mentions of price concerns, inflation and cost of living over the past two decades:

Concerns related to the prices of essential goods, food and housing were the three most common issues raised:

Colours of budgets past

The Budget has had a colourful past over the years - especially when it comes to what the ministers wore, that is.

From beige to pink, leaders who have tabled the Budget have dressed in a variety of colours as they revealed what’s in store for the nation each year.

Blue and its varying shades is the most frequently worn colour by the ministers, over the past 25 years.

This colour has been worn six times since 1998, followed by orange (four times), and pink and brown (worn for three times each).

From most to least

Budget 2024 will be the ninth that Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim will table.

It will be his second as Prime Minister. Prior to this, Anwar had tabled the budget seven times as Finance Minister from 1991 to 1997.

Tun Tan Siew Sin holds the record for the most number of budgets tabled at 13, from Malaya’s 1960 Budget right up to Malaysia’s 1974 Budget.

Anwar, Tun Daim Zainuddin and Dauk Seri Najib Razak are tied for second with each of them having tabled the budget nine times respectively.

Longest to shortest

On average, a budget speech is 11,140 words long, which would typically take less than two hours to read from start to finish.

Of the 10 finance ministers who have tabled the nation’s budgets, Tan holds the record for the longest.

Tabling the 1966 Budget on Nov 17, 1965, Tan read a speech that was more than 23,000 words long, which took him two-hours and fifty-five minutes to read.

The 1966 Budget tabling took place about three months after Singapore was thrown out of the federation of Malaysia.

Years with no budgets

There were no budgets tabled in Parliament for 1970 and 1971 on account of the May 1969 Emergency.

Years with two budgets

There have been two instances when Parliament was dissolved for general elections before the spending plans were passed by lawmakers.

On Oct 19, 1999, Finance Minister Tun Daim Zainuddin tabled the budget for 2000.

Parliament was dissolved on Nov 10 before the Dewan Rakyat passed the budget, and a general election was held on Nov 29.

Following the polls, Daim re-tabled the budget on Feb 25, 2000.

On Oct 7, 2022, Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Tengku Abdul Aziz tabled a budget for this year, but Parliament was dissolved for the 15th General Election (GE15) before lawmakers could approve the spending plan.

Following GE15 which was held on November 19 last year, Anwar tabled a fresh budget for this year on February 23.

From English to Bahasa Malaysia

From 1960 to 1976, Tan and his successor as Finance Minister Tun Hussein Onn delivered their budgets in English.

That changed the following year when Tengku Razaleigh switched to Bahasa Malaysia when delivering the budget speech in 1977. Since then all Budget speeches have been delivered in the national language.