Budget 2025: Financial Aid for Underprivileged M’sians Increased to Highest Amount Ever

According to Prime Minister Dato Seri Anwar Ibrahim during the presentation of Budget 2025 in Parliament today (October 18), the government has taken measures to improve the management and straighten imbalances in providing more meaningful to the people.

Due to this, Budget 2025’s Sumbangan Tunai Rahmah (STR) and Sunbangan Asas Rahmah (SARA) are seeing the highest increase with a RM13 billion allocation as compared to the RM10 billion allocation for 2024.

This includes:

• 4.1 million STR recipients’ households will receive RM100 a month through SARA, to be credited into recipients’ MyKAD starting April 2025 which can be spent on basic goods such as food, medicines, school supplies and more, in more than 600 supermarkets and retail stores nationwide.
• Single Malaysians will receive RM600 through STR.
• Assistance to the elderly will increase to RM600 per month, as compared to the current RM500 per month.
• Child Assistance Rate for Poor Families will increase to RM250 per child for children aged 6 years old and below, as compared to the previous RM200.
• Child Assistance Rate for Poor Families will increase to RM200 per child for children aged 7 to 18 years old, as compared to the previous RM150. This comes with a maximum rate of RM1,000 per family.
• Underprivileged families with 3 children are eligible to enjoy assistance of more than RM13,000 a year, as compared to the current RM11,000.
• Underprivileged senior citizens are eligible for assistance of more than RM10,000 a year, as compared to the current RM8,000.

“This means that no citizen earns less than RM1,100 a month and this does not take into account assistance from the state government, (department of) Zakat and foundations,” he said.

You can check out his presentation on Budget 2025 here. Do stay tuned for more updates.