PH’s budgeting does away with last-minute spending, Dewan Rakyat told

Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng says the government wants to avoid ‘last-minute Christmas shopping’ when allocations are not used up.

KUALA LUMPUR: Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng said the Pakatan Harapan government practises zero-based budgeting to avoid “last-minute Christmas shopping” where ministries rush to finish allocations given to them by the government.

“We do not want everything to be held up till the end of the year. It is like Christmas shopping where the allocation given is not used,” he said.

Lim told the Dewan Rakyat: “The approach before this did not include actual commitments. Every year, the allocations prepared were insufficient for new programmes, and (prepared) without looking at its effectiveness.”

He was replying to Ahmad Maslan (BN-Pontian) who had asked if the PH government was doing away with outcome-based budgeting in favour of the new method.

Zero-based budgeting is a system where each ministry or department, starting with zero ringgit to spend, has to justify all its allocations and expenditures rather than simply have increases based on the previous year’s allocation.

Outcome-based budgeting is a system where budgets are based on the relationship between funding and expected results.

The topic then moved to “missing” GST refunds of RM19.4 billion which saw Lim and former finance minister Najib Razak getting into a heated argument.

Lim reiterated that the previous government “had stolen” RM19.4 billion in goods and services tax (GST) refunds.

Najib, however, said the money was in the consolidated fund and the discrepancy was due to the PH government’s decision to go on a tax- free holiday for three months.

Najib said there would only have been a shortage of RM7 billion to RM8 billion in tax refunds.

Hearing this, Lim claimed Najib was suffering from “denial syndrome” and reminded Najib that the missing funds had accrued prior to the tax holiday in June 2018.

Ahmad Hamzah (BN-Jasin), who is a Public Accounts Committee member, reminded the floor that the GST funds issue was under the committee.

“The report is being tabled. All will be revealed next week,” he said, adding that the money was not missing.

But Lim said if the money was not missing “then why are we looking for the money. There is no money. It is either the opposition is confused or pretending not to know”. - FMT