COMMENT | Overall, if people expected Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim to come up with a bold, imaginative budget to start the long process of economic and societal reform in the country, he disappointed them terribly.

After months of speculating over what exactly he would be doing, much faith was put in the budget as a compass.

But it set no new directions, was bland, insipid even, but benign, and managed to tiptoe around all the major issues - offering no solutions to serious problems facing the country...