PM’s discretionary ‘near slush funds’ amount to RM20bn in four years

Something is very wrong with the way Prime Minister cum Finance Minister Najib Razak is handling our public coffers, says Liew Chin Tong.

The concentration of discretionary financial resources in the hands of the Prime Minister has reached an unprecedented stage: RM20bn has been budgeted for what I call “near slush funds” between 2011 and 2014.

On 30 October, I raised the alarm that five items in the Prime Minister’s Department’s development budget for 2014 are “near slush funds”, namely “restructuring of society (penyusunan semula masyarakat)“, “development programmes (program pembangunan)“, “special projects (projek khas)“, “people-friendly projects (projek mesra rakyat)“, “facilitation fund” (dana fasilitasi)“.

The sum of RM6.9bn is 65 percent of the PM’s Deparmtment’s RM11bn development allocation for 2014.

Digging further, I found such usage of “near slush funds” by the PM’s Department is a new phenomenon since 2011. In 2010, “restructuring of society (penyusunan semula masyarakat – 00104)” received only RM158,090,000.

But I must qualify that the “development of five corridors (pembangunan lima koridor – 00113)” and “NKEA (National Key Economic Areas – 94000)” were the labels that used to receive billions of ringgit of discretionary funds. For instance, NKEA received RM5.5bn funds in 2011 (when it first appeared) but only RM12m in 2014.

00113 Pembangunan Lima Koridor
	RM
2010	3,486,598,000
2011	505,596,100
2012	670,400,800
2013	1,327,033,700
2014	1,572,149,200

94000 NKEA
	RM
2011	5,465,500,000
2012	216,772,000
2013	41,549,000
2014	12,676,000

The government has been addicted to the Prime Ministerial discretionary “near slush funds” since 2011. The figure amounted to RM2.8bn in 2011; RM4.3bn in 2012; RM5.9bn in 2013 and RM6.9bn in 2014.

Kod	Near Slush Funds	2011	2012	2013	2014
		RM	RM	RM	RM
00101/93500	Projek Khas	23,870,300	47,000,000	1,892,075,800	202,862,000
00104	Penyusunan Semula Masyarakat	660,000,000	800,000,000	1,140,000,000	900,000,000
00108	Program Pembangunan	126,000,000	335,500,000	353,090,000	1,087,245,300
93000	Projek-projek Kecil	1,009,761,600	600,000,000
93600	Projek Mesra Rakyat				665,000,000
97000	Dana Fasilitasi	1,000,000,000	2,500,000,000	2,500,000,000	4,000,000,000
		2,819,631,900	4,282,500,000	5,885,165,800	6,855,107,300

This is a sum of almost RM20bn (RM19,842,405,000) in four years.

Discretionary funding items with scant details or “near slush funds” now make up 15 per cent of the entire development budget for 2014 of RM46bn whereas it was only 0.3 per cent in the 2010 development budget of RM53bn. The overall development budget has dwindled over the years but the PM’s “near slush funds” has grown exponentially.

	Near Slush Funds	Total Annual Development Budgets
	RM	RM	%
2010	158,090,000	53,219,657,000	0.30
2011	2,819,631,900	51,181,894,000	5.51
2012	4,282,500,000	51,248,900,000	8.36
2013	5,885,165,800	49,749,999,000	11.83
2014	6,855,107,300	46,499,999,000	14.74

Something is very wrong with the way Prime Minister cum Finance Minister Najib Razak is handling our public coffers.

Liew Chin Tong is the Member of Parliament for Kluang. ALIRAN