Under the PH Federal government, Sabah received the highest allocation amongst all states. The 2022 Budget ignores the unhappiness of non-bumis that despite making up 30% of the population, they received only RM345 million or 0.1% of the 2022 Budget of RM332 billion.
DAP does not object to the RM11.4 billion allocation for bumis but urges more and fairer allocations for both Sabah, Sarawak and all Malaysians. Using racist or extremist sentiments in Budget allocations will not help in saving lives and livelihood of the poor and businesses, especially SMEs.
Also unilaterally increasing the bumi quota for large government procurement contracts from 30% to 61% without any consultation raises many questions as to fairness to non-bumis and enhancing competitiveness. Further, Sabah and Sarawak benefit little from the bumi quota, raising further questions of justice to bumis in Sabah and Sarawak.
There is no doubt that in percentage terms, Sabah and Sarawak received less under the 2022 Budget as compared to PH’s 2020 Budget. Development expenditure in the 2022 Budget was increased to RM75.6 billion as compared to RM56 billion in PH’s 2020 Budget. However, Sabah still received the same amount of RM5.2 billion development expenditure in the 2022 Budget as PH had provided for in the 2020 Budget.
In other words, Sabah was worse off in receiving 6.9% of development expenditure under the 2022 Budget as compared to 9.3% under PH’s 2020 Budget. If Sabah were to be given the same 9.3% of development expenditure in the 2022 Budget that PH had provided for in the 2020 Budget, then Sabah should be receiving RM7 billion and not RM5.2 billion in the 2022 Budget.
The people-centric issues are inflation and rising prices that can be mitigated with a Price Stabilisation Fund and postponing the increase in electricity tariffs for commercial users by as much as 20%, opposing the withdrawal of tax exemption on foreign-sourced income for companies that imposed taxes on companies bringing back their earnings to Malaysia with a likelihood of a similar tax on individual income in future, opposing the increase in compound fines for breaching COVID-19 SOPs for individuals from RM1,000 to RM10,000 and for companies to RM1 million, and opposing the increase in bumi quota for large government procurement contracts or from 30% to 61%.