KUALA LUMPUR (Nov 12): Rembau Member of Parliament (MP) Khairy Jamaluddin, who holds the shadow finance minister portfolio, described this year's national budget as one that is not pro-rakyat, but more pro-business. 

"It can be concluded that this (Budget 2019) is not a pro-rakyat budget. This is a budget that heavily emphasises on privatisation and development in urban areas, but forgetting the rural areas," he told reporters at the Parliament lobby today. 

"For example, on the housing issue, the main scheme in the budget is a peer-to-peer lending, which is widely seen as helping investors and (property) developers, rather than solving the issue of home ownership by the poor," he added. 

"The government needs to be more pro-rakyat and less pro-business." 

Khairy was presenting his first official response to Budget 2019 at the Dewan Rakyat today. He claimed even the MPs from the new government do not like the budget, as there were not many questions from the other side during his speech. 

“Apart from one or two, there were not many interruptions by the government MPs [during my speech]. I was made to understand that even government MPs are dissatisfied that much of the government assistance for the people has been cut or reduced in the budget,” he said. 

Khairy, however, denied that the previous Barisan Nasional administration was focused on government assistance for the poor, so as to fish for votes from that segment. 

“We helped the B40 not because of votes. We helped the B40 because they are poor. 

“We were the first government to institute a massive cash transfer programme that used to be called Bantuan Rakyat 1Malaysia (BR1M),” he noted. 

Khairy also dismissed claims that the current government has to sacrifice on assistance to the poor, as it has to allocate much of the money to service debts incurred during the previous administration. 

“If you take aside the RM30 billion special dividends by Petroliam Nasional Bhd, the amount of this budget is not far from the budget last year.

"Debt servicing payments [in Budget 2019] are almost the same [as in Budget 2018], because we don’t have to pay government debts today. These are long term debts. So, you (government) had almost the same amount of money and you could have retained many of the programmes for B40, but you didn't do it. 

“So to me, this shows that this budget is very cruel towards [the] B40 [segment] and also does nothing for the middle class,” Khairy added.