Do you have an old car that’s no longer running, and the cost of reviving it doesn’t make sense compared to the low value of the thing? Instead of letting it rot away and take up space, how about scrapping that hunk of metal?
In this evening’s tabling of Budget 2026 by Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, the PM and finance minister announced that the government will, together with national carmakers, offer a matching grant (geran padanan) of up to RM4,000 for your old car.
A matching grant is exactly what it sounds like. If Proton or Perodua offers RM4,000 for your old car in a ‘cash for clunkers’ programme, the Madani administration will match it with a grant of RM4,000, meaning that you’ll get RM8,000 for your old car, which can be used for the purchase of a new national car.
Likewise, RM3,000 from the carmaker will be matched by RM3,000 from the gov’t, for a total of RM6,000. The OEMs can offer more, but the gov’t’s carrot maxes out at RM4,000. The only T&C announced is that the car to be scrapped must be over 20 years old.
Aside from giving a sales boost to the carmakers in Rawang and Tanjong Malim, the gov’t theory is that cars over 20 years old are not very safe. If you don’t believe this, check out our eyewitness account of an NCAP-style crashing of a 1993 Proton Wira. To read up more on the proper way to scrap a car – which is much easier now thanks to e-Dereg – click here.
The post Budget 2026: Up to RM4k of gov’t grants for scrapping of cars over 20 years old – buy a new Perodua, Proton appeared first on Paul Tan's Automotive News.
