Budget 2025 has done more for the older Malaysian than Budget 2024. The biggest news is the RM1 billion allocation for the welfare of older adults.
The allocations which make up this total include older persons’ allowance (RM910 million, increased from RM904.8 million in 2024), older-person activity centres (RM10.8 million from RM8.25 million), and Rumah Sri Kenangan and day care (RM23.5 million in total).
The government also announced that older persons’ allowances will be increased to RM600 from RM500 per month. With only a 5 per cent increase in allocation, despite the 10 per cent increase in amount handed out per person, does it mean that fewer older adults will be benefiting from this scheme?
While the increase in welfare allocations for older adults havw been modest with no real newly funded programmes, the tax incentives are new. Tax breaks for parents’ medical bills now include vaccinations, while sports equipment and activity tax breaks will now include similar expenditures for parents. Medical expenditure tax relief will also now include grandparents.
Further, allowances for care will be extended to parents and grandparents. In addition, tax relief for employers who bear child care allowances will also be extended to parents and grandparents.
The 50 per cent tax deduction for employers who provide up to 12 months’ paid leave for workers who care for disabled and sick children or family members is also an interesting initiative that can help to retain talents within the workforce.
These tax breaks are indeed interesting and represent skilful nudges to encourage individuals and employers toward favourable behaviour to enhance care provisions for older adults.
In particular, we are extremely interested in the tax break offered for expenditure on care of parents and grandparents. How would this tax break could be implemented?
Presently, the majority of what we consider formal care, in terms of residential long-term care and home-based care, provided by professional caregivers, are provided by unregistered care homes and freelance individuals, often undocumented migrants, respectively.
There must be tax invoices for tax claims. Such an incentive could therefore be a welcome incentive for better regulation of the care sector under existing agencies.
Civil society organisations representing the interests of older adults have been waiting to find out about funding which will follow the two national action plans launched by the Ministry of Health (MOH) on October 1, 2024, namely the National Dementia Action Plan and the Action Plan for Health Services for Older Persons.
However, there was no mention of specific budget allocation for either action plan within the MOH budget. Within the budget document, action plan implementation in other ministries were only mentioned as programmes rather than specific budget allowance.
Nevertheless, the outcomes stated within the MOH’s seven programmes have also not mentioned the above two action plans. In fact, the term ‘warga emas’ was only mentioned once in the MOH’s section, and it referred to number of teeth in older persons pertaining to the dental services programme.
However, all is not lost, as we are still hopeful that strategies within the action plans will somehow be funded through existing allocations, and that they are within the granular details that were not published.
Programme 6 stated within the MOH’s budget involves research and support services, which has been assigned the outcome of policy delivery, but this appears to be only relevant to policies within the Planning Division.
There is a RM1.5 billion allocation for new policies for the MOH, but this excludes the allocation for the Civil Servants Salary Scheme, a RM200 million allocation remains for expansion of the MOH’s commitments, some of which we hope will go towards implementation of our action plans.
In addition, services for older adults within the MOH are overseen by both the Public Health and Medicine Divisions. Within the Medicine allocation, Geriatrics or Older Persons were not mentioned, but health care provisions for older adults would lie within the General Medicine allocation, which could also include care for persons with dementia. In addition, dementia care could also be funded through the mental health budget allocation.
The Older Persons’ Sector of the MOH, however, falls under the purview of the Family Health Development Division, which has a sizeable allocation of RM4.2 billion for 2025, which includes all primary care services for the entire nation.
The World Health Organization (WHO) Integrated Care of Older Persons Framework is intended to be implemented within the community, and this had been clearly spelt out with the Senior Health Services Action Plan. It was, therefore, disappointing not to see this stated as a Public Health Programme Outcome.
Vaccines are handled by the Disease Control Subdivision of the Public Health Division. It is expected, therefore, that government-funded vaccinations for older persons with chronic health problems, as highlighted by the health minister earlier this year, would be funded by the Disease Control budget allocation.
Our hopes that the 2025 budget would reflect the much-awaited Health Transformation Plan, as stated in the Health White Paper, which clearly emphasises health care, and not sick care, and the need to reform health care provisions, especially community and integrated care, to reflect the needs of an ageing nation, have somewhat been dashed.
Change, however, takes time, and the recognition of the need for long-term care through increased tax provisions is a welcome development. The verdict for Budget 2025 is therefore this — a small but well-considered step in the right direction, and we definitely hope for much more of the same in the next Budget.
Signatories
- Alzheimer’s Disease Foundation of Malaysia
- Association for Residential Aged Care Operators of Malaysia
- Gerontological Association of Malaysia
- Majlis Pusat Kebajikan Semalaysia (MPKSM)
- Malaysian Coalition of Ageing (MCOA)
- Malaysian Healthy Ageing Society
- Malaysian Society of Geriatric Medicine
- Nursing Care Association Selangor
- Persatuan Kebajikan USIAMAS Malaysia
- Pusat Activity Warga Emas Putrajaya
- Persatuan Pesara Lembaga Penduduk dan Pembangunan Keluarga Negara Malaysia (LPPKNM)
- Seniors Aloud
- Third Age Media Association
- University of the Third Age (U3A) Malaysia
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