PARLIAMENT | The Dewan Rakyat today passed an RM11.97 billion supplementary budget for 2019 - Pakatan Harapan's final year in government before it was overthrown in late February this year.
The bill consists of RM7 billion to cover operation expenditure and RM4.97 billion for development expenditure.
The bill was tabled by Finance Minister Tengku Zafrul Tengku Abidin last month, and Perikatan Nasional Ministers today justified the over-budget expenses of their Harapan predecessors.
Umno lawmaker Shahidan Kassim (BN-Arau) remarked on this turn of events several times while debating the bill during the committee stage.
"We are helping them (Harapan) to approve (their spending) officially," he said.
Earlier, before the lunch break, he ticked off Harapan lawmakers for allegedly not being enthusiastic in supporting the supplementary budget.
"You already ate, now you don't want to pay?" he remarked.
Supplementary budgets have been a regular practice in Malaysia with critics saying it allows the government to spend more money than has been allocated in the annual budget and approving the extra amount later.
Former BN-era deputy finance minister Johari Abdul Ghani today said this was unavoidable and efforts have been made to reduce the number of supplementary budget bills from up to four times a year, to just one.
Yesterday, Ahmad Maslan (BN-Pontian) and Wong Chen (Harapan-Subang) both called for the government to practice better fiscal discipline going forward such as by limiting supplementary budgets and keeping them to within two percent of the original budget. - Mkini
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