MoF to table Fiscal Responsibility Bill by end of 2022

KUALA LUMPUR – The Fiscal Responsibility Bill will be presented in Parliament by the Ministry of Finance (MoF) before the end of 2022.

In the recently released 99th Laporan Kewangan Rakyat, Finance Minister, Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Abdul Aziz said that the MoF also intends to include medium-term revenue strategies as well as guiding principles on matters like a bigger revenue base and statutory debt limits.

He stated that a country must be subject to stringent financial supervision and control in order to have sufficient resources to carry out proper reform programmes while at the same time meeting the nation’s environmental, social, and governance (ESG) agendas.

He added in the report that these and also other MoF priorities that Budget 2023 will outline are in the recently published Pre-Budget Statement.

According to Tengku Zafrul, the MoF’s focus since the year 2020 has been to bolster Malaysia’s socio-economic resilience. This is being done so that Malaysians and businesses are able to recover quicker and stronger than before if another crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic or even more severe ones were to emerge in the future.

Additionally, he explained that the MoF operates under the guidance of three primary concepts which are responsiveness, accountability, and reform, in order to provide the groundwork for long-term reforms.

He said that various policies are founded on the ESG principles while also taking into consideration the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to the greatest extent possible.

He stated that ESG-based changes are able to establish long-term socio-economic resilience, which is the best defence against future shocks and pandemics.

“In fact, the nation’s efforts towards sustainability have already started with government-linked investment companies (GLICs) like Khazanah Nasional Bhd, Employees Provident Fund (EPF) and Permodalan Nasional Bhd (PNB), all which have already launched their respective sustainability frameworks and targets,” he continued.

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