“We must have an independent body to forecast and analyse fiscal policies and their impact,” said Geoffrey Williams of the Malaysia University of Science and Technology.

“Parliament can then use this to scrutinise government policy. Without it, we have the blind leading the blind.”

Williams was commenting on reports that finance minister Tengku Zafrul Aziz is set to propose raising the statutory debt limit from the current 60% of gross domestic product to 65%.

He claimed that the finance ministry’s Debt Management Office (DMO), established in May 2019 to review the government’s debt and liabilities, did not cover the wide implications and alternative interpretations of budget and debt issues.

The DMO has since been renamed the Fiscal Policy and Debt Management Office. Its other functions include executing the federal government’s borrowing programme to meet the needs of the fiscal deficit and managing and monitoring the government’s debt.

Williams said Tengku Zafrul’s proposal meant time was ripe to reopen a discussion on the establishment of an independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), which he suggested in 2018.

Britain’s OBR was set up in 2010 following a recommendation Williams made when he was a member of the Conservative Party’s economic policy committee. It provides independent analyses of the UK’s public finances and is one of a growing number of independent fiscal institutions (IFIs) around the world.

Williams said the OBR was set up after the 2010 British election, when there was a need for “independent, credible and transparent” budget information to prevent disputes between coalition partners.

The International Monetary Fund estimates that there were nearly 40 IFIs across the world in 2016, with all Eurozone countries currently required to have such bodies.

While the institutions that serve this role have existed for many years in some countries, there was a sharp rise in their numbers in the wake of the global financial crisis.