Two former finance ministers - Lim Guan Eng and Najib Abdul Razak - today criticised current Finance Minister Tengku Zafrul Abdul Aziz's justification for tapping a quarter of the National Trust Fund (Kwan)'s monies.
In a statement, Lim lashed out at Zafrul for misleading MPs when Budget 2021 was tabled and debated last year.
"For Zafrul to now say that the RM5 billion required was not included in the Budget 2021 is dishonest and a gross misrepresentation to MPs, who were led to believe that the RM5 billion will be made available from the 2021 Budget or through borrowings.
"There was no mention of 'raiding' and dipping into Kwan by Zafrul when Budget 2021 was debated in Parliament last year," said Lim.
When Zafrul tabled Budget 2021, he mentioned in paragraph 28 of his speech that Covid-19 vaccine supplies will cost in excess of RM3 billion.
Eventually, opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim noted that the RM3 billion figure did not appear in the Estimated Federal Expenditure 2021 document.
According to Zafrul's media briefing yesterday, the government initially budgeted RM2.3 billion to procure vaccines for 80 percent of the population.
Currently, it wants to spend RM3.5 billion to do so and to acquire a stockpile enough for 40 percent of the population.
In addition, the immunisation programme cost had doubled from the initial estimate of RM0.7 billion to RM1.5 billion.
This was the latest cost breakdown used by the government to justify the utilisation of RM5 billion from Kwan, which has RM19.5 billion in assets.
Kwan is solely dependent on Petronas for funding and has built this amount since 1988.
Meanwhile, Najib accused Putrajaya of "breaking" its budget for 2021 despite it being only April, citing the words of Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin who said the government does not have much money left, and hence the need to utilise Kwan's money.
According to Najib, Putrajaya resorted to borrowing RM85 billion this year alone and is worried about the political implications should the nation's statutory debt breach RM1 trillion.
He also accused the government of awarding many direct negotiation contracts during the emergency, which could not be scrutinised by Parliament.
"What are these projects? How much do they cost? Who received the awards? We don't know because Parliament cannot sit...
"The Perikatan Nasional government will not admit to all these because these are the main reasons why they want to utilise Kwan funds," he wrote on his Facebook page last night. - Mkini
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