This year Malaysia’s budget came under more intense scrutiny than usual. After all, speculation that elections would be held sometime soon after the budget had been intensifying. A summary of who got what is available here.

With a critical flourish, the first off the mark was opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim who argued that Malaysia would soon hit its debt ceiling as deficits continue unchecked. He also challenged the Prime Minister to a debate to compare whose budget was better. His point about the debt ceiling was discussed in detail by Nurhisham , who noted that it was a non-issue. Nurhisham had his own analysis of the Government and Pakatan Rakyat’s budgets.

Morgan Stanley’s Singapore office also had their say.

Dr. Veerinderjeet Singh, a tax expert and Managing Director of Taxand Sdn Bhd, together with the Michael Yam, the president of the Real Estate and Housing Developers Association Malaysia provided the business views on the Budget on the BFM radio station.

There are many different perspective but which budget is better and is Malaysia on the brink of a financial collapse?

REFSA (Research for Social Advancement), a think tank aligned to the Democratic Action Party (DAP) certainly thinks that Pakatan has the better budget and can arrest Malaysia’s soaring public debt. REFSA not only provided a detailed analysis of the budget but compared it with the budget prepared by Pakatan.

What do you think?