KUCHING, Oct 9: Budget 2023 lacks transparency on special allocations to Sabah and Sarawak as stipulated under Article 112D of the Federal Constitution, says Bandar Kuching MP Dr Kelvin Yii.
He said 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 two 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 (PH).
“These Special Grants under Article 112(d) of the Federal Constitution before this was never reviewed since 1969 under the previous Barisan Nasional (BN) administration.
“When PH was in power, we doubled the special grants in 2020 and would have quadrupled it within the next 5 years. It is unfortunate that since the change of government, the Sarawak government has accepted lower payments for past years,” he said in a statement today.
Dr Yii who is also Democratic Action Party Socialist Youth (DAPSY) national chief noted that the Sarawak and Sabah governments have said that they are still negotiating a more equitable formula.
Following this, he questioned the rationale of not retaining the higher payment introduced by PH, which as a result, he said, both Sabah and Sarawak have lost out on additional funding for the past three years because such talks and negotiations had somehow taken a back seat and were not prioritised even though it involves the rights and needs of both regions.
“While I welcome the proposed amendments announced by the Finance 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,” he added.
On top of that, he said even with the “election budget” and the biggest budget Malaysia has ever had, the overall percentage of development funds to Sabah and Sarawak had decreased to 12 per cent of the overall development budget.
“In 2020 under PH, the total development funds allocated to Sabah and Sarawak was 17.14 per cent of the overall development budget, followed by 13.91 per cent in 2021 under PN and 12.9 per cent in 2022.
“This year, even with an upcoming election and the nation’s biggest budget, the allocations for development to Sabah and Sarawak is only 12 per cent 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 imbalanced 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,” he emphasised. — DayakDaily
