PUTRAJAYA (July 7): Malaysia’s national poverty line income (PLI) will be revised and announced by the government soon, says Minister in the Prime Minister's Department (Economy) Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed.
Speaking to reporters today, Mustapa said the topic of the PLI has been discussed for two years, with a revision on the PLI made during the Mid-Term Review of the Eleventh Malaysia Plan in 2018.
“The findings were then presented to the Cabinet, who then asked me to perform several engagements [with government committee members]. Once all these engagements are done, we will issue the new figures related to the poverty line income, soon," he said after the launch of the Census of Malaysia 2020 event earlier.
Mustapa added that the current national poverty line income of RM980 per household per month was based on the methodology of a study done in 2005, which he acknowledged is now outdated.
When the PLI was set at RM980 in 2005, the national per capita income was RM20,000, he said.
Today, however, the national per capita income is RM45,000, which is more than double what it was back then, he said. Therefore, the new revised PLI is expected to be more than RM980.
"The 0.4% poverty rate too is expected to be higher," he said.
Mustapa was responding to queries on a recent report which stated that Malaysia’s national poverty rate of 0.4%, the lowest in the world, was "misleadingly low and unrealistic".
The report was published on July 6 by former United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, based on a visit to Malaysia in August 2019.
According to news reports, Alston said Malaysia appeared to have backtracked on its previous commitment to revise the national poverty line.
Alston said while the previous government had committed to revising the national poverty line, the new government's response to Alston's final report threw that commitment into doubt, stating that it "stands by (the) absolute poverty rate".
"The government's reversal is deeply concerning because the current line is inadequate and almost universally considered to be misleadingly low.
"The insistence that the line is 'derived from internationally accepted standards' is a smokescreen and ignores the blatant mismatch between reality and statistics," Alston reportedly said.
He added that Malaysia had made impressive progress against poverty in the past forty years, but its continued use of an outdated and unrealistic poverty line obscured the troubling reality that millions scraped by on very low incomes, a situation only made worse by the Covid-19 outbreak.
Alston said if the government wanted to eradicate poverty, revising the poverty line is just the first step.
Alston visited Malaysia from Aug 13 to 23, 2019. During his visit, he travelled to Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Sarawak, Sabah, and Kelantan, and met various stakeholders including state and federal government officials, international agencies, civil society, academics, and people affected by poverty in urban and rural areas.