KUALA LUMPUR: Providing handouts, such as the Bantuan Sara Hidup (BSH), will only increase the government’s debt as it requires Putrajaya to take up more loans to fund the programme. When tabling the 2020 Budget yesterday, Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng announced RM5 billion in allocations for the BSH programme. Federation of Malaysian Consumers Associations (Fomca) chief executive officer Datuk Dr Paul Selvaraj said the BSH programme did not help the people much as it was a one-off payment. He said continuing with such a programme would only lead to an increase in the poverty rate, school dropout problem and unemployment. On the government’s decision against reintroducing the Goods and Services Tax (GST), Selvaraj said: “After the introduction of SST, prices of goods did not go down.

Source: New Strait Times October 11, 2019 21:11 UTC