Budgeting- Back To Basic

Due to our Malaysian current economic situation, it is recommended for us to revisit back our approach in managing budget. Our last financial crisis in 1997 was mainly due to currency manipulation or speculation, which resulted with certain amount of RM, we might get less goods or services compared to the normal economic situation.

Our current economic situation shows that the speculators start to think making money through speculating the prices of commodities including food items. The situation is the same with Malaysian financial crisis happen in 1997. But the different is that the speculators shift from making money from money market to commodity market. Its is good for the farmers such as small palm oil plantation, but for major food item such as rice, the price incrased at retail level may cause major havocs in our social life.

I believed that the Malaysian government should consider reactivating “ Majlis Tindakan Ekonomi Negara (MTEN)” for the sake of Malaysian. It is important to ensure we can achieve the Vision 2020 within the target.

Basic article:

Back to Basics:Measuring Economic Performance Using a Basic Needs Budget Approach

Current measures of poverty have come under increasing
scrutiny by policy-makers and practitioners. Changes in
family structure, labor force participation by women, and
societal obligations such as child and eldercare, call for
more complex measurements of family need. Economist
Stephanie Seguino focuses attention on the “basic needs
budget,” a new approach to measuring poverty and family
need. She proposes a set of criteria for developing a basic
needs budget and suggests that the basic needs approach
promises to provide a more accurate assessment of how
our economic system is performing its basic task--that of
ensuring an adequate production of resources and a fair
distribution of those resources.

-Stephanie Seguino

http://www.umaine.edu/MCSC/MPR/Vol4No2/seguino.pdf

Beyond Budgeting

"The traditional performance management model is too rigid
to reflect today’s fast-moving economy. Two new approaches—
devolution and strategic performance management—have
risen in popularity, but they are equally frustrated
by unyielding budgeting systems"

JEREMY HOPE AND ROBIN FRASER


http://www.dushkin.com/text-data/articles/28197/body.pdf