Supplementary budget of RM19.6 billion won’t affect 3.7 pct fiscal target — Lim

KUALA LUMPUR: Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng yesterday said the supplementary budget of RM19.6 billion will not affect the government’s fiscal target of 3.7 per cent for 2018 as it was part of the real expenditure for the year.

When tabling the second reading of the Supplementary Supply ( 2018) Bill 2019 at the Dewan Rakyat yesterday, he said the fiscal target had already been achieved.

He said the estimated supplementary budget of RM19.6 billion comprises RM15.49 billion in development expenditure and RM4.13 billion for operating expenditure.

“As explained, RM6.3 billion is the previous government’s commitment that had not been provided an allocation and RM4.3 billion is for repayment of offbalance sheet items borrowed by the previous administration.

“The balance of RM9 billion is not an additional budget, but rather a reclassification of the expenditure, mainly from operating expenditure to development expenditure,” he said.

This includes RM2 billion for payment for Majlis Amanah Rakyat ( Mara) students locally and overseas, RM1 billion to service Dana Infra loans as well as RM3.9 billion to service Private Finance Initiative (PFI) loans.

Besides the reclassification, he said RM1.9 billion was allocated for the transfer of surplus to Kumpulan Wang Pembangunan.

Lim pointed out that the real operating expenditure and development expenditure for 2018 amounted to RM289 billion compared to RM280 billion approved for the 2018 Estimated Federal Expenditure.

“It needs to be emphasised that the increase in expenditure of RM9 billion was due to the actions of the previous government and not the Pakatan Harapan administration,” he said.

He explained that due to the increase in expenditure, RM6 billion needed to be allocated to meet the expenditure commitments made by the previous government that were not budgeted for.

These commitments include the takeover of the Eastern Dispersal Link ( EDL) in Johor worth RM1.4 billion after the previous government decided to abolish its toll at the end of 2017. — Bernama