KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia's subsidy reforms have proceeded for more than two years, with Finance Minister II Datuk Seri Amir Hamzah Azizan attributing public acceptance of the changes to fairness and trust in the system.
He said transparency and the government's efforts to balance fiscal needs with support for those requiring assistance had helped secure acceptance of difficult decisions.
"Now the reality is we've now done subsidy rationalisation for more than two years. We still don't have riots in the streets.
"The government seems to have figured out how to do the balancing and actually make it clear that society accepts that it has to make decisions.
"It has to accept that decisions are not always easy, but it accepts them because of the concept of fairness and trust in the system," he said at the Khazanah Megatrends Forum at the Mandarin Oriental Kuala Lumpur here today.
