The minister in the Prime Minister’s Department said the report for 2016, released by the Statistics Department, showed rising household income, declining incidence of poverty and decreasing income inequality under the BN government.
He said the median monthly household income increased to RM5,228 in 2016 as opposed to RM4,585 in 2014, with a growth rate of 6.6% per annum at nominal value.
“In terms of real value, median monthly household income grew at 4.4%.
“This means Malaysian household income grew faster than the inflation rate of 2.1% for the past two years.
“This debunks the popular notion that income in Malaysia is stagnant or income increment does not match the rising prices of goods and services,” Rahman, who is also BN strategic communications director, said in a statement.
Meanwhile, the overall incidence of poverty improved from 0.6% (of the population) in 2014 to 0.4% in 2016, he said, adding that the figure was 3.8% in 2009.
“The Economic Transformation Programme (ETP), the brainchild of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, kicked off in 2010. It has come to fruition as more people have escaped the poverty trap since 2009,” he said.
The MP for Kota Belud in Sabah also said the Borneon state saw the most significant improvement in poverty alleviation from 4% in 2014 to 2.9% last year.
He said this was due to the efforts of both the state government and the federal government.
Rahman said those who blamed the government for Sabah having the highest poverty rate in the country needed to consider that it had the highest contributing agricultural sector, at 27% of the state’s economy.
Its manufacturing sector was relatively low, contributing only 8.3%, and the mining sector, mainly oil and gas, was only 62% of what Sarawak had achieved, he added.
“It would not be a stretch to imagine that this happened due to the fact that Sabah was almost neglected – in terms of infrastructure and development – for more than two decades under the longest-serving prime minister,” he said, apparently referring to PPBM chairman Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who was PM for 22 years till 2003.
“It is only under the tenure of the current PM that development of Sabah has been given priority,” he said.
Rahman also said the Gini coefficient for Malaysia, used to measure income equality, declined to 0.399 last year from 0.401 in 2014.
“Evidently, this shows that income inequality between households in Malaysia has progressively decreased as the median income of the bottom 40% (B40 category) grew from RM2,629 (in 2014) to RM3,000 (in 2016), with a growth rate of 6.6% annually – faster than the top 20% (T20) household income growth of 6.2% while the middle 40% (M40) recorded the highest growth of 6.9% per annum,” he said.
2nd quarter GDP growth beats forecasts as economy expands 5.8%