Thursday 28 Mar 2024
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(October 9): Pakatan Rakyat today said the best way to reduce the country’s deficit was by tackling corruption and leakages in government expenditure.

PKR vice-president and Pandan MP Rafizi Ramli said more money can be saved through this method instead of increasing prices of products and services and cutting subsidies.

“We have proved it numerically that if the government focuses on combating corruption it will be easier to handle the deficit instead of increasing the price of goods or cutting subsidies,” said Rafizi.

In its 2015 budget, Pakatan said a robust and effective programme can result in savings and have a tremendous positive effect on the federal government’s financial position.

It projected savings through these measures as much as RM11.8 billion in 2013 and RM12.4 billion in 2014 on the estimation of a 10% rate in corruption.

Pakatan’s budget would also rely less on state oil company Petronas in order for reforms to take place.

The opposition alliance said that Barisan Nasional’s over reliance on Petronas funds has created a sense of complacency in the ruling government, causing it to put reforms on the back burner.

With their budget, Pakatan said Petronas would be made accountable to Parliament.

Serdang MP Dr Ong Kian Ming said that Pakatan has also looked at expenditure within the Prime Minister's Department, such as the Malaysian Nuclear Energy Development Expenditure, which was merely exploring the possibility of nuclear power and not building the nuclear plant itself, where the initial exploration cost was RM6 million.

He added there was also a need to look at the not-so-transparent allocations to 1MDB, KLIA Bhd and Indah Water Konsortium, which were all under the PM's Department.  

"We have also identified overlapping agencies, such the Agensi Inovasi Khas, Unit Inovasi Khas, the Malaysian Industry Group for High Technology, the Malaysian Productivity Council and the latest, Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre (Magic).

"All these costs hundreds of million in ringgit and we think consolidation would save at least RM100 million here," Ong said.

He added that various programmes also need to be reviewed, including the National Blue Ocean Strategy, which was allocated RM913 million in 2014, all the National Key Economic Area programmes with RM2.17 billion allocation in 2014 and the National Key Results Area programmes which were allocated RM1.33 billion in 2014.

"It adds up to RM4.5 billion in 2014 and we think that we can easily save RM1.5 billion by relooking the effectiveness of these programmes.

“These are our suggestions to reduce expenditure and I am sure Barisan Nasional does not have the political will to reduce expenditure in tomorrow’s budget," he said.

In their budget, Pakatan also opposed the recent increase in fuel prices because the price of crude oil has fallen from the region of US$110 a barrel to around US$90 a barrel over the past few months. 

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