ABSTRACT
On 19 March 2004, the Secretary-General of the Health Ministry Datuk Alias Ali circulated a memorandum instructing the ministry’s senior officers to institute with immediate effect an austerity budget for 2004 which should as much as possible maintain the ministry’s expenditures at the 2003 level, and which, in any case, would not be increased beyond the allocations committed as of that date.1 An account of this appeared in Malaysia’s popular online press:
The Health Ministry has ordered significant cutbacks in its [planned] expenditure after receiving a Treasury directive that there will be no increase in its financial allocation for 2004 . . . As a result, the Health Ministry now finds that it will not be able to meet staff salaries across the country by as much as RM210 million, unless it undertakes costcutting measures.
