This is simply astounding and quite unbelievable! !! And what is all that nonsense about subsidies hurting the economy??
A PRESIDENT, A QUEEN and TWO PMs
According to The Nut Graph, studies by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development that reveal that Malaysia has the highest civil servants-to- population ratio in the Asia Pacific.
Then, DAP national publicity secretary Tony Pua said Malaysia had a bloated civil service - Malaysia’s ratio was 4.68%, compared to Indonesia’s 1.79%, Korea’s 1.85% and Thailand’s 2.06% all of which have less than half our ratio.
Last week, MP Liew Chin Tong revealed in his blog that the Prime Minister’s Department’s allocation for 2010 is a whopping RM12 billion, not RM4 billion as some people may have perceived it to be.
That's a lot of money! Like many Malaysians, I wondered why that department is NOT tightening the belt like what the rest of us are doing in the light of subsidy cuts and warnings of imminent bankruptcy by 2019.
Based on MP Liew's blog, WE all have summarized a few astounding facts:
A. Staff size of the PMD
Year: 1981
PM: TDM
Staff size: 4,414 staff in the PMD
TWENTY YEARS LATER
Year: 2001
PM: TDM
Staff size: 9,673 ( this is an increase of 119.14% after TWENTY YEARS)
Year: 2003
PM: Badawi
Staff size: 21,045 in 2003 (this is an increase of 117.564% in TWO YEARS)
Year : 2009
PM: PM Najib Razak
Satff Size: 25,332 (this is an increase of 20.37% over 6 years)
Year 2010
PM: PM Najib
Staff size: 43,544 people (this is an increase of 71.893% in ONE YEAR!!!!)
After that mathematical exercise, WE all decided to compare the budgets of our PM with that of the US President , Singapore PM and the Queen of England.
The White House budget request for 2011 (p. 13 of this PDF) is for a total of US$393,883,000 which works out to RM1, 299, 813, 900. In the last line on that page, the White House budget says that this does not include programs.
So facts and figures show that the budget for The White House is $394 million.
The Budget for our Prime Minister's Office is RM4 billion (US$1.25 billion).
What is the operating budget for the Executive Office of the President?
In 2010, the White House staff comprises 1,888 people - a very sharp contrast indeed to 43,554 in the PMD. In simple terms, White House staffing is 4.3% of the Prime Minister’s Department. Amazing. You can read more about the White House budget and staffing numbers HERE.
The figures seem to show that it costs three times as much to run the PM's office as it does the entire Executive Office of the President of the US.
Hmmm...Something must be wrong here.
Let's take a look at Singapore.
At THIS SITE, it says that "A total budget of $290.94 million has been allocated to PMO in FY2010 to achieve this mission."
That works out to RM681.207 million for the Singapore budget.
Understandably, Singapore can afford that as even with a population of 5.1 million (3.2 million) excluding foreigners, enjoys a per capita income of more than USD 37,293. In sharp contrast,Malaysia has a population of 27 million and a per capita income of USD6897!!! (Source: Wikipedia) That for US is USD 46, 381.
So this means that Singapore's per capita income is 5.4 times that of Malaysia even though Malaysia's population is more than 5 times that of Singapore.
Comparatively, one can understand if our PMO's budget is higher than that of Singapore based on population size and area. But how then can it be higher than that of the US President?
