Pantau Laksana: Assessing Malaysia’s Transparency and Accountability Initiatives in Implementing Emergency Fiscal Responses is a report that discusses the sources of funds, funds allocation, beneficiaries, and reporting of the nine economic stimulus packages (ESPs) rolled out by three successive governments during the COVID-19 pandemic from 27 February 2020 to 28 June 2021.

The nine ESPs were announced in response to the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on businesses, employment, and the supply chain, in order to cushion the impact of COVID-19 and to assist in economic recovery. Similar to many countries, Malaysia faced a tradeoff between efficiency and oversight in this unprecedented crisis. Due to the exigency, direct expenditures by the government in most of the packages were only retrospectively approved by the Parliament in August and December 2020. While much effort was invested in ensuring programmes were communicated to the public, reporting gaps remain in the sources of funding and fiscal impact of the measures announced.

IDEAS calls for more parties to continue requesting information about major programmes under the ESPs, and recommends the government that emergency bypass measures be restricted to immediate crisis relief.

The report is also a part of the IDEAS Pantau Laksana initiative, where IDEAS created a dataset that consolidates the data from the announcements and implementations of the ESPs. For more details, please visit pantauwangkita.com/pantau-laksana.