PUTRAJAYA (March 22): The RM8.83 billion supplementary budget approval sought by Putrajaya for Budget 2017 is "no big issue", said second Finance Minister Datuk Seri Johari Abdul Ghani today.

"I will explain [the breakdown] to the Parliament next week," Johari told the press at the sidelines of Ministry of Finance open day held here.

"We must table the budget every other year to rectify on spending that we could not have detailed during the initial budget tabling.

"So no big issue on it. What we have [spent on] we are very transparent," said Johari.

Out of the total sum of RM8.83 billion, some RM7.79 billion is allocated for operating expenditure (opex) and only RM1.05 billion is for development expenditure.

Of the sum tabled, Johari explained that the RM2.7 billion contribution to statutory funds — parked under opex — is not considered as part of real expenditure, but rather "excess [government] revenue over expenditure that we transfer into development funds".

"The real [additional] expenditure outside of the Budget [2017] which has been tabled was at over RM5 billion," he said.

Johari however hinted that each Budget tabling included "lump sum" contingencies for operating and development expenditures amounting to RM1.5 billion and RM2 billion respectively. All things considered, the government exceeded its contingency mark for opex by about RM3.7 billion.

Johari argued that the government has improved the accuracy of its spending estimates, now that the supplementary budget tabling is only done once a year, from up to four times previously.

"We have improved the efficiency of our budget calculation. Our budget is almost accurate, we have achieved the budget deficit [target]," he said.