KUCHING: The Budget 2020 tabled in Parliament yesterday saw a negligible increase in development expenditure, says Sarawak Business Federation (SBF) secretary-general Jonathan Chai.
In terms of monetary quantum, he said the only consolation of the Budget tabled by Minister of Finance Lim Guan Eng was that the operating expenditure did not escalate.
The total budget is RM297.02 billion, out of which RM241.02 billion is meant for operating expenditure and the remaining RM56 billion for development expenditure.
Jonathan Chai
“However, greater commitment and effort must be shown by the Pakatan Harapan government to downsize the civil service in order to reduce the operating expenditure where the bulk of it goes to the salaries and allowances of the civil servants,” he said when prompted for comments yesterday.
In light of the current financial position of Malaysia, Chai said Malaysians could not expect much from Budget 2020.
For the business sector, especially for business operators in Sarawak, he feared they would face a great challenge if the minimum wage was revised upward to RM1,200.
“However, it remains unclear as of now whether major towns as described in the Budget would also cover towns in Sarawak.”
He also noted that the federal government had announced to increase the maternity leave from 60 days to 90 days from 2021.
“This would also increase the employers’ cost of operation even though it is now the trend of the developed nations to provide such welfare to female employees.”
He said it would be ideal for the government to provide some form of subsidy to ease the burden of employers.
Chai, who is also president of the Federation of Boards of Management for Aided Chinese Primary Schools (SJKC) of Kuching, Samarahan and Serian Divisions, was delighted that allocation for SJKC was maintained at RM50 million.
He was also pleased that allocation for independent Chinese secondary schools had increased to RM15 million next year, from RM12 million this year.
“It is also good news that RM783 million is budgeted for dilapidated schools in the country, hopefully most of which could be channelled to Sarawak to rebuild or repair those schools in very bad condition,” he said.
However, he also observed that the discrepancy in allocation of development funds between Sabah and Sarawak seemed to be drawn further apart.
Sabah and Sarawak were allocated with RM5.2 billion and RM4.4 billion, respectively.