There seems to be lack of transparency in the 2022/2023 Federal Budget especially when it comes to direct financial allocations to Sabah and Sarawak especially under the constitutional special grants under Article 112D as it is not stated in the budget book, unlike in previous years.
In previous budgets, it will be clearly stated “special grants to Sarawak or Sabah” with the quantum clearly shown for transparency. It was through those figures that for the past 2 years I raised the fact that there was a reduction of the special grant since 2021 when Perikatan Nasional (PN) took over and since then they have reduced it by half of what was increased by Pakatan Harapan.
This Special Grants under Article 112(d) of the Federal Constitution before this was never reviewed since 1969 under the previous BN administration.
When Pakatan Harapan (PH) was in power, we doubled the special grants in 2020 and will have quadruple it within the 5 years. It is unfortunate that since the change of government, the State Government has accepted lower payments for past years.
While the State Governments has said that they are still negotiating a more equitable formula, I question the rationale of not retaining the higher payment introduced by PH, which as a result, both Sabah and Sarawak have lost out on additional funding for the past 3 years because such talks and negotiations has somehow taken a back seat and not prioritised even though it involves the rights and needs of both our region.
While I welcome, the proposed amendments announced by the Minister to the Inland Revenue Act 1995 (or Act 533) to include state civil servants from Sabah and Sarawak in the authority’s board of directors, but this has yet to be tabled in Parliament, and any dissolution of Parliament as predicted will delay this process all over again causing us to lose out on millions.
In this year’s budget, the quantum is not even mentioned as if there is something to hide. This is something I will raise in my debate as we need to scrutinise whatever the figure may be as it involves our public funds.
On top of that, even with “election budget” and the biggest budget Malaysia has ever had, the overall percentage of development funds to Sabah & Sarawak decreased to 12% of the overall development budget.
It is important to see not just the quantum, but the overall percentage in order to get an overall picture of the focus and priority given by the federal government.
In 2020 under PH the total development funds allocated to Sabah & Sarawak was 17.14% of the overall development budget, 2021 under PN, 13.91%, 2022 12.9% and this year, even with an upcoming election and the national’s biggest budget, the allocations for development to Sabah & Sarawak is only 12% of the overall development budget.
While by quantum we do see an increase, but it is still inadequate and more still must be done to correct the imbalance development in both our regions. This is something that I will raise in Parliament in my debate including to seek the reason why Sabah was given a significant amount more than Sarawak when it comes to this allocation.
But more important, I demanded that all expenditures must be used transparently and accountably to make sure it reaches directly to the development needs of the people rather than seeing wastages, or even worst being abused and used to enrich only a certain group of elites.