Putting more cash in the hands of the vulnerable
KUALA LUMPUR: The first payment of the two tranches of Bantuan Prihatin Rakyat (BPR) will be paid to recipients before next year’s Hari Raya Aidilfitri, Finance Ministry national budget director Johan Mahmood Merican said.
He said the registration to apply for the BPR will open by the end of January.
“As the scope of the recipients has been widened this year, eligible individuals, who were not last year, will be able to apply for BPR.
“The ones who have received the assistance through last year’s BSH (Bantuan Sara Hidup) are not required to do so as we will bring forward the data that we have into 2021 BPR,” Johan said.
BPR, which is going to replace BSH, was announced by Finance Minister Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Abdul Aziz during the tabling of the 2021 Budget last Friday.
Johan said the rationale behind the wider disbursement of the BPR was to boost the economy by increasing the rakyat’s spending power, reduce their burden and putting more cash in the hands of the vulnerable.
“It is evident that in the past, we have seen that when we give out
cash assistance to rakyat, they will spend the money and support the economy,” he said.
Under the new cash assistance programme, Johan said there would be more recipients — 8.1 million — with an allocation of RM6.5 billion.
Under BSH, RM5 billion was allocated, benefitting 4.3 million recepients.
Besides that, the assistance for B40 and M40 groups under BPR would be increased with the allocations being in accordance with the income of the household and number of children.
On concerns about the inadequate assistance extended to the M40 group as claimed by several quarters, Johan said the government’s focus now was on helping the most affected groups amid the Covid-19 crisis.
He said these included the disabled, B40 as well as the people who had lost their jobs and whose wages were affected.
He said the government, however, was not sidelining the M40.
“There are a few measures that aimed at helping the M40, including the lower rate for individual income tax by one percentage point for those earning taxable wages from RM50,001 to RM70,000 which is expected to benefit 1.4 million taxpayers,” he said.
Johan said besides that, the finance minister had announced the lowering of the minimum contribution rate towards the Employees’ Provident Fund, which was reduced from 11 per cent to nine per cent for a period of 12 months beginning Jan 1.