No Budget Revision At The Moment, Says Malaysian Minister

PETALING JAYA (Selangor, Malaysia), Dec 30 (Bernama) -- The Malaysian government will not make any revision to the 2016 Budget now despite declining oil prices, says Deputy Finance Minister Johari Abdul Ghani. "When we prepared the budget, the oil price was then US$48 per barrel but now it has dropped to US$36 per barrel. "The impact on government revenue is bearable, so we do not see a need to do a revision at the moment, however, we will continue to monitor oil price movements in the first quarter of next year," he told reporters here, Wednesday. Even if oil price were to fall below US$30 per barrel, Johari said the government would tweak its spending to mitigate the need to adjust the national budget. On the possibility of revising the petrol pump price to weekly from monthly, he said the government was open to this suggestion as long as it does not burden the people. Johari said the Petrol Dealers' Association of Malaysia was scheduled to submit their proposal on this to the ministry next week for their consideration. "We do not see a problem in doing the revision weekly but oil and gas companies and petrol station operators must also be on board," he said. Johari said the weekly revision would result in petrol pump price movement being more reflective towards the current market and its changes would not be too drastic. --BERNAMA