Govt has responsibility to develop and maintain facilities — Othman

KUALA LUMPUR: The government has the responsibility to develop and maintain infrastructure in the country and must set aside allocation to manage these facilities, said Deputy Finance Minister, Datuk Othman Aziz.

He said the high allocation for administration in Budget 2018 included salary and emolument and supply of equipment to manage the existing facilities.

“Every year, we set a development expenditure (for infrastructure projects) and these are completed in a few years whereby we need to manage these facilities,” he said during an interview in Bernama News Channel’s “Ruang Bicara” programme on “Post-Budget 2018: Holistic and Comprehensive” on Thursday night.

Last week, the government had proposed a total allocation of RM280.25 billion for Budget 2018, out of which RM234.25 billion would be allocated for operating expenditure and the balance of RM46 billion for development expenditure.

Othman said the government expected the country to register an economic growth of between 5.0 per cent and 5.5 per cent.

“We can project a higher economic growth but that requires us to be in debt and affect the country’s rating,” he added.

Meanwhile, Othman said the federal debt as of June 2017 amounted to RM685.1 billion and debt-to-gross domestic product ratio was at 51.9 per cent.

“More than 90 per cent of our debt are from local sources including the Employees’ Provident Fund and local banks as we have gone through a bad experience of having foreign debt, where we are subjected to foreign exchange fluctuations and others,” he said. — Bernama