Rural and Regional Development Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob – fresh from receiving encouraging first-month numbers for his Malay-only MARA Digital Mall pet project – must have been raring to fly abroad to spread his ministerial wings in Egypt, but alas, it is not to be.
Ismail announced that he would be cancelling his working trip to Cairo, due to impending cuts in Budget 2016.
Instead of being in Egypt himself, the minister has asked a member of the Malaysian ambassadorial staff to represent him at the graduation ceremony of Malaysian students there.
“Usually there are many trips abroad but this year we will get our officials overseas to represent us,” he told Bernama today.
Ismail added that from here on in, his ministry would only conduct meetings and seminars in hotels it owned … instead of currently holding those events in fully-private hotels and paying for them with taxpayers’ money, we suppose.
However, the minister assured Malaysians that the cuts to Budget 2016 will not hamper his monistry’s work to develop the rural communities, through MARA and other agencies.
Prime Minister and Finance Minister Najib Razak is scheduled to announce amendments to Budget 2016 on January 28. The amendments are expected to address the continued weakness of the Ringgit, and the plummeting price of global oil.
