Chong Chieng Jen – File photo
KUCHING: Pakatan Harapan (PH) Sarawak chairman Chong Chieng Jen has claimed that both Sabah and Sarawak are actually getting a combined 31.9 per cent from the state-specific Development Expenditure (DE) of Budget 2020.
He explained that in Budget 2020, RM30.1 billion of the RM56 billion provided under the DE are state specific, while the remaining RM25.9 billion is for general application across the country.
“Out of this RM30.1 billion DE, Sabah and Sarawak are allocated a total RM9.6 billion, thus bringing it to 31.9 per cent, with Sarawak getting 14.95 per cent and Sabah getting 16.94 per cent. This is in line with PH’s manifesto which promised to allocate 30 per cent of the DE to Sabah and Sarawak.
“In fact, this method of calculation for state-specific allocation of DE has been used since Barisan Nasional (BN)’s time. It is nothing new.
“During BN’s time, even adopting the same method of calculation, Sabah and Sarawak got much less than what the two states now get from PH,” he said in a statement today.
Chong, who is also Deputy Minister of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs, said state-specific means that the allocation can be identified to be spent specifically in a state or another.
As for the remaining RM25.9 billion, he said it is not confined to a specific state but of general application across the country.
He cited the allocation for the Defence Ministry as an example, whereby RM746 million is allocated for army equipment, RM383 million for air force equipment and RM945 million for navy equipment.
He also mentioned that a total of RM300 million was allocated to the Economic Affairs Ministry, RM201 million to the Entrepreneur Development Ministry, RM76 million to the Energy, Science, Technology, Environment and Climate Change Ministry and RM124 million to the Communications and Multimedia Ministry.
“There are many of such allocations in the DE in other ministries which cannot be identified or confined to a state while their effects and impacts are spread across the nation as a whole. The total of such allocation in the DE is estimated at RM25.9 billion,” added Chong.
Therefore, he said the allegation by MPs from Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) that the calculation of Sarawak’s portion of DE is RM4.5 billion out of the whole RM56 billion and thus Sarawak only gets eight per cent of the DE, was made based on twisted facts and ‘malafide’ (with bad intent).
He also mentioned that if compared with all the past budgets tabled by the previous BN government, Budget 2020 contains the largest proportion of the DE for Sarawak.
“To the GPS leaders and elected representatives, they have no moral ground to criticise because when they were in power, they approved the past budgets which gave Sarawak much less.
“The PH government will always prioritise development for Sarawak which has been neglected by the BN all these years. We thus urge GPS not to distort facts and sabotage the federal government’s projects in Sarawak,” he said.
He also stressed that PH will continue to accord Sarawak and Sabah with the rightful treatments as one of the three partners in the federation, an example of which is the continuation of the general subsidy instead of the targeted subsidy for Sabah and Sarawak.