RM75 bln devt expenditure for Sabah, S’wak — DAP

KOTA KINABALU: In pursuit of fair and equal distribution for Sabah and Sarawak, Pakatan Harapan (PH) has revealed its alternative budget for 2018.

The party proposes to allocate 30 percent of federal development expenditure, amounting to RM15 billion annually, to Sabah and Sarawak. Sabah will be allocated at least RM7.5 billion of development expenditure annually.

“Over five years of a Pakatan Harapan government, we will deliver RM75 billion in development expenditure to Sabah and Sarawak,” said DAP Sabah chairman Stephen Wong.

In comparison, Stephen, who is the DAP member of parliament for Sandakan, said this proposed allocation will be at least two times higher than the allocation under the Barisan Nasional administration.

From 2010 2014, BN’s development expenditure allocation to Sabah is RM3.6 billion in 2010, RM4.5 billion in 2011, RM2.8 billion in 2012, RM2.3 billion in 2013 and RM2.0 billion in 2014, according to A written reply from the Ministry of Finance in parliament.

Wong said that this shows that PH is committed to narrowing the huge wealth disparity and gap between East and West Malaysia by increasing the development budget for Sabah and Sarawak.

In addition, PH understands that as Sabah and Sarawak are lacking in balanced development, therefore besides proposing onethird of the development budget, PH will also increase the oil royalty to 20 percent for Sabah and implement the tax revenue sharing for the Sabah state government to honour the terms of the Malaysia Agreement 1963.

Commenting on the federal to budget which will be announced on Friday by Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak, Wong, who is also DAP Sabah chairman, said that it is very much expected that the budget for 2018 will be the ‘sweetest budget we will ever see’ in the Malaysian history.

“It is expected that there will be a lot of ‘goodies’, such as increased amount of cash handout, largescale and fancy infrastructure announcement, etc. But everything will be business as usual for Sabah. It is not likely to see a reform in the fiscal policy where Sabah and Sarawak will have fair share,” Wong added.

Insisting that Sabah needs a new deal in terms of fiscal policy. Wong said: “We need a new system where resources can be shared and distributed fairly to the state. However, I do not think the BN has the intention to do that.”

Despite the many goodies and big infrastructure projects that are expected to be announced in this coming budget, Sabah will not see any real change that will meet the aspirations of Sabahans.

Stephen reminded the BN government not to forget the many promises made, such as building more than 70,000 affordable houses in Sabah (now only 24% achieved), proposed gas powered plant in Sandakan to solve the electricity problem in the east coast of Sabah, upgrading of Sandakan airport, the proposed BRT project in KK and price standardization between Sabah and Peninsular Malaysia.

He said these promises were made few years ago. If the BN fails to fulfill these promises, then the people of Sabah will be more than ready to reject the BN and install PH as the new federal government.