Contractors, tycoons celebrating record budget for development, says MP

 

PKR’s Wong Chen slams higher development expenditure at a cost to operating expenditure under Budget 2023.

PETALING JAYA: The RM94 billion development expenditure will see government contractors and tycoons “celebrating”, says an opposition MP.

Subang MP Wong Chen said he also expects these groups to be major contributors to the coffers of political parties ahead of the next general election (GE15).

In a series of tweets, the PKR man said that in a typical year, the development expenditure should be within the range of RM50 to RM60 billion.

He added that the higher expenditure this year was “obviously a case of election fever spending”.

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“I am sure that many of these tycoons and contractors will be opening their cheque books to make political donations soon for GE15,” he said.

Wong added that the RM369 billion budget tabled today was the “biggest ever” in Malaysian history but it was also funded by what he claimed to be the largest development debt of RM97 billion which he deemed as unsustainable.

“This has gone through the roof! The government intends to borrow RM97 billion to pay for this highest ever development expenditure.”

He also said the government was reducing operating expenditure for 2023 by about RM12 billion compared with 2022.

With the reduction, he said Putrajaya must clarify why subsidies were being actively cut for 2023.

Meanwhile, in a Facebook post, Wong claimed the government intended to cut subsidies and social assistance in 2023 to RM42 billion from RM58 billion this year.

He said, this was a reduction of RM16.9 billion, which constitutes a 29% drop from the allocation this year. - FMT