Companies were forced to shut down, its citizens were forced to look for new jobs and dig into their own savings to survive.
And in Malaysia, the pandemic has reportedly hit the country's bank account hard.
'For the country'
Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said that the country is now running out of money due to the pandemic, Malaysiakini reported.The reason for that is because the government has thinned out the country's coffers to help the economy and to help Malaysians weather the COVID-19 storm.
Muhyiddin reportedly made the disclosure when he was announcing a RM4 million allocation for the Sikh community in Petaling Jaya, Selangor on Monday afternoon (13 April).
“So much money has been spent last year and this year. Why? For COVID-19. This included various stimulus packages totalling RM340 billion and RM322 billion allocation for the national budget.
"I went to school, but I am not good at calculation... how much it adds up... it’s more than RM600 billion — that’s a big sum of money," he was quoted as saying.
As such, Muhyiddin claims that there's not much left in the government's bank account.
“What I am trying to say here is, we don’t have much money left. We don’t have as much [money] as before, because the most important thing for us is to ensure our livelihood; we should be able to manage ourselves better,” he said, as quoted by the news portal.
On 17 March, the Prime Minister announced a new economic stimulus package worth RM20 billion to help the economy, the sixth such package unveiled since the start of the pandemic.
The amount includes an additional RM11 billion fiscal injection from the government with five main thrusts and 20 strategic initiatives, including Prihatin worth RM250 billion, Prihatin SMEs (RM10 billion), Penjana (RM35 billion), Kita Prihatin (RM10 billion) and Permai (RM15 billion).