Copyright Notice

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the author, at the address below.

Sakmongkol ak 47

ariff.sabri@gmail.com

Wednesday 16 June 2010

How much does the average Malay mamat earns monthly?


I wanted to see, how the 'data' on the estimates on mean monthly income is received. As expected, it causes consternations among many. The average china man is interested to be in the monthly income RM 11,000 per month bracket. They don't believe the number.
The average Malayman also wants to be in the RM 3000 per month bracket. Even this paltry amount is desirable for the Malays because, they know, earning this RM 3000 per month is a work of fiction. The average Malay doesn't believe in this number too.
It would be politically stupid if the government comes out with a figure of Malay monthly average income that is far below than his Chinese fellow citizen. That would suggest that the entire economic policy on which they stake their future has been unsuccessful. So in my mind, placing the average income of a Malay as RM 3000 per month is more politically acceptable.
But what if the real average monthly income of the Malay is actually below RM 1,000? That would make the government almost criminal in its failure to address the Malay economic issue.
In 2009 for example, our GDP was 679,000,000,000. That's RM679 billion. The Malay population is 16 million. 16 million Malays share a portion of this Income. Let's use the favorite number as an approximation. Use 18% as the Malay share in wealth /equity is 18% currently.
That means 16 million Malays share 18% of 679 billion. You calculate to get the Malay average yearly income and divide the resultant by 12 to get the mean monthly income. You will be shocked to see that's about RM 636 per month.
Will the government dare admit that the average monthly income of the Malays is RM 640? Ask the Malay man in the street- would a monthly earning of below RM 1000 be the norm rather than a fictitious RM 3000 plus?

22 comments:

Ir. Hanafi Ali 16 June 2010 at 12:48  

Dato your economic analysis is simple astute!

Keith 16 June 2010 at 13:31  

Your maths is quite bad.

Rm636 is for every Malay Man, women and child.

If you take it so that the average family is Malaysia is 3 children + w2 working parents, you get an average household income of Rm3180.

Which equals to round about Rm1500 per working Malaysian adult.

Of course I haven't factored in elderly and retirees yet.

Now take the Indian population with it's barely 3% equity and perform the same calculation. Indians would be poorer than Malays.

It isn't a matter of inter-racial comparisons, but intra-racial comparisons.

If there are millionaire malays and billionaire Indians, that means that the amount left for the average man (whether Malay/Indian or Chinese) is paltry, and in some cases less than Rm600.

It's sad.

Donplaypuks® 16 June 2010 at 13:33  

Without the benefit of Govt statistics to back me up, I will take a shot in the dark.

In M'sia, there's now way the average and mass of Chinese earn $11,000 per month or Indians $9,000 per month, unless they all have two jobs or earn it playing the stock and real estate markets, through gambling or being members of MLM companies like Amway.

Its possible many augment their day job salary through giving tutition which I know is very lucrative. But not everyone can be a tutor. No 30% quota can be reserved for anyone here because results are everything!

The average is more likely to be in the $4,000-$5,000 range. I think that's how much a Govt doctor or engineer might earn after 5 years in service.

dpp
we are all of 1 race, the Human Race

Eyes Wide Open 16 June 2010 at 13:40  

It is terribly sad that many Malays earn less that RM1k per month - even after 40 years of affirmative action. It boggles my mind how they can survive in a city like KL!

But the root cause of the problem lies not with the Chinese as Ibrahim Ali is so fond of accusing.

The root causes are (among other things):

- an education system so stunted that it cannot produce functional professionals, leaving thousands of graduates wallowing in low-grade jobs.

- political leadership at all levels that does not inspire the people to lift themselves up, but brainwashes people that they have no hope of survival and permanently need the crutches that only they can offer.

- sickening leadership by example: massive corruption, blatant abuse of power, getting away with all kinds of heinous crimes, uncouth behaviour, divisive rhetoric, etc. Focusing on these nonsense does nothing to lift up the martabat of the average Malay

Instead of accusing the Chinese of economic oppression, perhaps people like Ibrahim Ali should do a bit of research into the history of the Malaysian Chinese.

How did such a large group of illiterate immigrants who arrived with no money produce a 2nd and 3rd generation of Malaysian Chinese that make up the majority of the middle class in Malaysia?

Did they do it by oppressing the Malays? I doubt the average Chinese rubber tapper, hawker, labourer, etc from Merdeka days had the means to oppress anyone!

Quantum Metal Consultant 16 June 2010 at 14:42  

Dato, saya berpendapatan RM0 sejak 24 bulan yang lalu. Masih hidup kerana 'saving' dan mungkin selepas ini 'starving'. Saya tidaklah mgnharapkan bantuan bulanan dari jabatan Kebajikan Masyarakat memadailah kalau anak dapat biasiswa untuk belajar dalam atau luar negeri.

Masa Negara miskin 20 tahun lalu, pelajar melayu cerdik dapat biasiswa dari sekolah sampai ke univeristi, tetapi sekarang ketika negara maju, sepatutnya bertambah rupanya 'hancus'.

Kerajaan buat kerja separuh jalan, banyak sekolah asrama penuh dibina untuk menampung pelajar Melayu untuk cemerlang tetapi apabila mereka sudah berjaya, sebahagian besarnya diserahkan kepada IPTS untuk dihisap darah.

Dengan PPTN bertambah ramainya remaju Melayu 'disenaraihitamkan' dari institusi kdewangan yang akan menyulitkan lagi mereka untuk trus 'survive'.

Apakah Dato' masih percaya kerajaan yang ditunjangi UMNO hari ini masih 'baik' atau 'terbaik' untuk orang Melayu.

Angka RM3000 itu si bahalol mana yang bagi pada Najib untuk terus percaya dan buat dasar ekonomi baru.

Anonymous,  16 June 2010 at 14:43  

Dato,
Let me have a go.

There are 3.87 million Bumi households. If we use the DOSM's mean monthly household income figure for the Bumis : RM 3,412 (2008) then total household income for the Bumi is RM13,195,711,628 per month - which is equivalent to RM 158,348,539,535 per year.

Private Consumption or Expenditure in the National Accounts [which we shall be basing our calculations on, is in fact household expenditures plus expenditures of non-profit organistions (like NGOs) which is small and insignificant] and for the year 2008 Private Expenditure is RM 334,147,000,000.

Even at this stage we see the glaring disparity! The gross total household income per year of Bumi is NOT EVEN HALF of the total private expenditure, only 47%.

There are lot more bumi households than there are non-bumi households. And a lot more bumi population as bumi households tend to be bigger.

Carrying on, lets assume - to be conservative - on the average the Bumis do have the capacity to save, invest, etc up to about 20% of their income (doubtful and does not really show, as can be seen in the under-subscription of the recent Amanah Saham funds launched for bumis; whereas the fund for the non-bumis snapped up within days).

Bumis in general are more likely to be increasingly indebted and impoverished due to their ‘hand-to-mouth’ level of income and teeny disposable income amount.

Any trauma in life (breadwinner falls sick or involved in accident, even kereta rosak) will cause severe financial crisis that may be irreparable!

Based on above ‘saving assumptions’ means bumi spend only abt 80% of their gross household income RM 158.348 billion x 80% equals to RM 126.679 billion.

But from the National Accounts, the total Private Expenditure is RM 334.147 billion. Therefore, The expenditure of the non-bumis is RM 334.147 - RM 126.679 = RM 207.468 billion.

Assuming also the non-bumi save or invest 30% of their income (most likely more! but for lack of data we shall assume that coz the national average savings abt 30%) their gross household income is RM 207.468 billion x 1.3, right? So that ‘s RM 269.709 billion.

There are 1,959,535 non-bumi households in 2008.

Therefore average yearly income for non-bumi equals RM 269.709 billion divide by 1,959,535 households, right?

That amounts to RM 137,639 per year .

Equivalent to RM 11,470 per month – non-bumi average monthly household income.

We can borrow the DOSM ratio of Chinese/Indian incomes to get the respective incomes of Chinese and Indians separately.

Private expenditures of the National Accounts I supposed are obtained from surveys of final consumptions at various retail establishments (that DOSM may have got it about right maybe) but that way the final consumption numbers will also capture the wealth expended from the underground economy also.

Refer to OECD’s Estimating Household Final Consumption Expenditure Quarterly - http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/9/30/2446195.pdf for more info.

I stand to be corrected. So please, please correct me. Some assumptions may be inaccurate, but hey this is partly economics and more common sense, even Krugman has not settled his differences with fellow economists on fiscal policy issues since decades.

Anonymous,  16 June 2010 at 14:56  

Dato.

I'm intrigue & curious - did you post or even pop Berahi Ali this analysis while you guys sitting drinking and watching him enjoying the "kelantan Serunding" ?

I ♥ to hear what does Berahi Ali react and take on this.

Setakat dia nak citer pasal Berahi Ali buat muka Jibby merah padam cakap kat berahi ali tuh you can shove it up your ar*e where the sun dont shine!

Anonymous,  16 June 2010 at 16:18  

Dato , how does we calculate GDP. It is just a data shet for understanding the economy trend and not the actua what we earn. Not 18% equity is hold by 18 M Malay. RM679 billion/ 18%Equity / 16M = RM676 /mth it meant newly baby born also have income of RM676 /mth .... sound good.Si this we called GDP ..... I only today how it works and I miss my economy class previously bcz too much concentrate on maths.

It shows that NEP is still relevent in order to boost Malay equity to 30% so that malay GDP .... RM1061/mth still far behind the target, so UMNO need to adjust the equity figue to 150% bcz 100% = RM3536/mth... not meet the K...O...PI. In order to get RM11K/mth , wht figure will be right .... to increase GDP need to work hard but to increase equity is easity way so set at 600%. Malaysia boleh (semua boleh tapi kerja tal boleh)

Quiet Despair,  16 June 2010 at 17:58  

Lets talk about the average Mats and Minahs in the city

Mat Despatch by day, Mat Rempit by night.
Salary around RM700.
Can afford to eat only nasi campur most times with air sirap limau.
McDonalds too expensive. Maybe once in a while treat girl-friend there.
End of the month: No money.
Frustration: Go rempiting. Ask mum for money to buy petrol.
Also rempit betting to earn more money to finance the 'hobby'.

Minah Kilang
Salary: RM600. Sent money to parents at kampung.
Most times bring packed lunch from home. Or subsidised meal at factory canteen.
Have to share a crowded house with at least 8 other males and females.
End of the month: No money even to buy a tube of lipstick.
Frustration: Stayng together illegitimately. Possibility of abandoned babies.

Mat Manager with a working wife, the 2.5 kids, two cars and a house (though not with a white picket fence).
Combined income: RM7,000.
Have to service cars and house loans and other necessities including utilities and grocery. Kindergarten and maid or nursery bills.
Weekend jalan-jalan, makan-makan.
End of month: Also nothing.
Frustration: Join Pakatan who has promised a better future.

Who are they all blaming? The government.
Who's happy: Ah Longs for the first two. For the bank manager maybe overdrafts.

Ariff Sabri 16 June 2010 at 18:04  

keith
per capita income is calculated as national income divided by the population sample. after you get the PCI, you then dont add up individual PCI to get income per household. that would result in a curious outcomes.as a Malay family on average consist of 5 people, then they would be , on average the family with higher income.

Anonymous,  16 June 2010 at 18:35  

Someone posted.. NEP is still required to get the Malays to 30%.

Now first and foremost, everybody wishes that Malays should strive to achieve that 30% too. But the problem lies how you wish to achieve that ! Not whether anyone oppose or not. Or even whether Malays deserve to have NEP or not.

As you know , no one owes anyone a living nor have to work to give that 30% away. Take it from us all...no one wants to do that.

You want to achieve that .. you work for it. You cannot deny another the opportunity to progress naturally according to his abilities.

Guys like Brehim Alis just wanted to be "fed" and "fed" just because he is of a certain skin color or race. What he wants is to just sit down beside the table and ask for 67% of the food while the breadwinner gets misery 33%! what is worse is that the breadwinner has to take all the risks, capital and sweat to earn that 33%. He can also fail and loses everthing he has and Brehim Ali just goes to the next table and collect his due.

This will never work and no RACE in the world would accept such stupidity.. not even 30%

Yes, go ahead earn that 30%. Try to be better. Train the Malays to be the best and compete.
Definitely not when he or she is below performance and yet rewarded just because he belongs to certain race. And definitely not using quotas to get as many % to have degrees that are not worth the paper they are printed on.

What has happened to everything you see in Malaysia. CAn anyone tell us ONE good area/achievement (bad ones we know we have a lot) that Malaysia can tell the world ... we are the best? I shy to even dare to mention when overseas except we have the twin towers (build using money and foreign expertise).

You see failures of GLCs after GLCs in billions not millions. Nowadays guys are no more interested in million dollar projects... now they talk about billions!

Just check those losing GLCs and people's money. See the culprits .. how they are doing after being "retired" for bad performance. Gosh even the contractor that built collapsed stadiums are having plum jobs building our Palace.

Still think we have a future?

No way.. fat dreams.

In this world.. if you want anything.. use your brains and work for it. No one owes you anything.

Anonymous,  16 June 2010 at 22:34  

this umno will hv no place in the 13GE

Anonymous,  17 June 2010 at 00:13  

On any given day while driving or stopping at red traffic light, look left and right at motorcycle riders. Whether riding alone or with pillion, you will notice almost 99% are Malays.

This group accounts for the majority of Malays. Simple arithmatic will tell you that they are in the RM1,000 income bracket.

Go to any KFC, McD, Pizza Hut or any fastfood outlets, you will certainly see almost 100% of them came from the same ethnic background.

Visit any private sector offices, the drivers/peon/despatch riders and receptionists are positions they would definitely claim to be their domain.

Take a look at faces at toll booth while you pay. 100% are brown-coloured skin.

Check with insurance companies, numbers of Malay policyholders are negligible. Check further with banks, Fixed Depositors with names accompanying a bin or binti is like searching for a needle in the hay.

You want more.... ah yes, security guards with a salary of RM750....I can go on and on and bore you to death.

What have the governtment achieved for the last 52 years. I rest my case.

Scarecrow

Anonymous,  17 June 2010 at 00:55  

Dato,

In this case, clearly it would be more prudent for the statisticians to employ the median method of calculating the income per month. Particularly given Malaysia's high gini coefficient.

Mat Cendana 17 June 2010 at 05:42  

Salam, Dato' & All.
Been quite some weeks since I was last able to comment here. I'm sure many people had missed me <--Kes perasan kelas chronic Heheh!

Firstly, before I forget: To Anon 22:34 -- Congratulations! This statement is the leading contender in my "Clueless Declaration of the Year" award. The prize is getting Two Days & Two Nights at the Batang Kali KTM Station.

Anyway, back to the subject matter: I'm not clear/confused about GDP - Gross Domestic Product(?) You have used 16 million to divide the national pie/pizza/murtabak. But this means that ALL the Malays are included, regardless of age and whether they're working, correct? If it's RM636 for each man, woman and child PER MONTH, then isn't that `quite okay' i.e reasonable?

Anonymous,  17 June 2010 at 12:52  

Mahathir is still blaming the Chinese. He blames PAS and PKR for the 'disunity' of the Malays.
He blames the everyone except himself and UMNO.
This old Indian-turned-Malay-man disassembled, regressed, impoverished, dethroned the Malay race.
This Mamak made the Malay graduates unemployable by making them 'illiterates' in English.

Navi 17 June 2010 at 16:05  

Dato'

How do we reconcile the fact that5 despite what all these statistics show, there are thousands of Malays, Indians and yes even Chinese whose household income doesn't surpass the RM1,500 per month mark. These figures simply show that there are more affluent Chinese than the other races and that a few thousand Indians have more money than the rest put together.
We are also assuming that there will be at least two members of each family working. It simply is not the case. Some lone pensioners support family of four or five.

What the government should be doing is looking at each and every individual case on its own merit. Lets us not talk in terms of the Malays , Indians and Chinese but include the other races of Sabah and Sarawak to decide where affirmative action is most needed.

Under the NEP, only the rich BN affiliated seems to have benefited.

Anonymous,  17 June 2010 at 17:04  

To: Anonymous, 16 June 2010 14:43

While your exercise is the most interesting, there is one correction and two issues to remember:

1. Correction: Don't mix up Private Expenditure and Private Consumption in the NAS. Private Expenditure includes Private Investment. You are referring to Private Consumption.

2. When you take numbers from two different data sets, first make sure they match up. So, the Private Consumption is an estimate in the NAS, whereas the Household Income is an estimate from the Household Income Survey. For your calculations to be valid, Total Household Income in the Household Income Survey must be equal to Private Consumption in the NAS. Usually, it isn't; can be more or less, but I believe in recent years, the Total Household Income has been less than the Private Consumption estimated. So, you will find that if you add up all the household incomes -- bumi, and non-bumi -- and take that as a percentage of Private Consumption, you aren't going to get 100% (that's true of most countries). In other words, what's implied in your calculation for bumi -- that non-bumi income comes up to 53% of Private Consumption in the NAS -- doesn't hold.Suppose we say that Total Household Income = 90% of Private Consumption. Then, your 47% actually becomes 52%. If 85%, it becomes 55%. In comparisons of incomes from household surveys and consumption from NAS, it's considered ok if the incomes are between 80-120% of consumption in the NAS, as everyone knows that incomes are only imperfectly captured, particularly at the top, while consumption in the NAS is itself also imperfectly estimated.

3. The problem with the category Bumiputera. It lumps together two groups with quite different profiles, namely Malay, and all those small indigenous groups in Sabah, Sarawak and the Orang Asli in the Peninsula. But, as is usually the case, people in the Peninsula think Bumiputera = Malay. Not true. Even for the country as a whole, Malay = 85% of Bumiputera. This "Other Bumiputera" are the worst off of the whole lot of us, other than foreign workers -- we got a glimpse of this in the mid-term review of the 9MP, when the household incomes of the Other Bumiputera in Sabah and Sarawak were reported. So, if Malays were to receive total income about the same as their proportion of population, when lumped with Other Bumiputera, it's going to come up significantly less than the Bumiputera proportion of population. And we do know that the Other Bumiputera do get quite a bit less than Malays.

4. On a different matter, what is true is that Malays and Other Bumiputera have larger household sizes. So, on an individual basis, they would get less when compared to others. But some would argue that the size of household is a matter of choice, not something outside of one's control, like race (one doesn't choose one's race). So, as with other matters of choice, people should take responsibility for their choices, and not have others take responsibility for them. That said, this should not be confused with that other argument -- a lie -- that the poor are poor because they have large families.

Anonymous,  17 June 2010 at 18:34  

Dato',

I am a malaysian chinese, married with 2 kids. I am 45 years old and working as a supervisor in a factory. My wife don't work because she has to take care of our 2 children since we cannot afford a maid. I earn a gross salary of RM4,500 per month with overtime so please explain to me how did you arrive at the RM11,000 per month income per chinese person. Is it fair to lump in the wealth of the Vinent Tans, Yeoh Tiong Lays, Genting Lims, etc to work out the amount of RM11,000 income per chinese?

I don't know Vincent Tan, Yeoh Tiong Lay or the Genting Lims and I am absolutely sure none of them will want to share their money with me and the many other malaysian chinese in my same situation. So I think your analysis is not accurate, misleading and unfair.

Ariff Sabri 17 June 2010 at 19:49  

anon at 18:34
i have said the chinese dont believe the number. the Malays too dont belive their asigned number.
the point is this. in economics the PCI is obtained by divinding total income of that countrty for than year and dividing it by the population. we assume the total income is divided . PCI does not mean, it is actually divided nor does it show who gets what amount.

conversely, you cant take the PCI and multiply with the number of people in one household. its not done that way.

suppose on average a Malay earns PCI of 1500. ig he has 4 family members, that doesn't mean the household earns 1500 x 4= RM6000.
its truer if we take it that RM 1500 is being shared among 4 people.
the PCI is just an approximation of the extent of a nations income hypothetically divided by its population.

Anonymous,  17 June 2010 at 21:45  

2 years back I drove to Sipitang , refuel at a gas station . Chatted with the local pump attendant.he made only 280 a month.
Went for a drink in a cafe by kg air kk , waitress salary is 350 working from 11am to 10pm . Her boss drive a 645 bmw and his coffee cost 6.50.
A techcian I hired there is paid 1500 by us.former boss who drive a new Landcruiser paid only 600. I got screwed by M&E association in KK for `overpaying and ruining market salary' just because I believe in treating all my staffs equal either west or malaysia.Goy sucks but same time business entity has to be fair too rather than keep on dreaming adding fleets of cars that they don't even drive.

Jamal JB

Anonymous,  18 June 2010 at 12:50  

the conclusion I get from ur well written piece is

1.I am not an average mamat cos i earn less then the average

2.I may not be even a Malay cos I am not in the average

3.It does not matter anyway cos BN will make us (involuntarily) bankrupt by 2019

Thanks

  © Blogger templates Newspaper III by Ourblogtemplates.com 2008

Back to TOP