Is Going Bankrupt Becoming a Norm?

It's true as it came from the mouth of the Insolvency Department.

Last year the number of bankrupt Malaysians stood at 16,306 or an average of 1,812 persons per month.

Given the rising cost of living unleashed by drastic subsidy withdrawals in gasoline and sugar in 2013 after the general election and the early January 2014 biting increases in electricity tariff and minimum wages and the looming GST tax juggernaut to be effective in April 2015, one cannot but fear that more bankruptcies will be declared in 2014. Currently, there are already 27,432 bankruptcy petitions in court.

Statistics for 2012 showed that of 19,575 persons declared bankrupt in that year;the distribution were as follows:

Malays-48.4%;
Chinese: 33.2%
Indians: 14.1 %.

Based on age demographics,a shocking 21% or 4,100 persons were below the age of 34 and the causes of their bankruptcy were failure to settle repayments for big ticket items such as car and housing loans and the inability to pay debilitating credit card debts.

An Opposition leader has speculated that for 2013, the number of Malaysian bankruptcies may overflow beyond 20,000.

As such, to avoid this phenomenon, can we emulate some of those dissenters from the European Union who wants the word bankruptcy to be outlawed; to be cosmetically replaced by a more acceptable and politically correct phrase,"debt adjustment"?

As they say, a rose is a rose................