Budget 2023 was submitted by Finance Minister Tengku Zafrul Aziz, who announced an RM372.3 billion allocation.
Compared to the RM332.1 billion budgeted for 2022, this represents a rise of RM40.2 billion. For operations expenses, over RM272.3 billion has been set aside, while RM95 billion would go for development.
Right after Budget 2023 was unveiled, Subang MP, Wong Chen, shared his point of view of the distribution of Budget 2023 through his Tik Tok.
“This is a massive election budget of RM369 billion! The biggest ever in Malaysia history but it is funded by the biggest ever development debt of RM 97 billion! Overall deficit is 5.5% of GDP,” Wong Chen posted on his Twitter account.
“What is my political reaction? With lower operating expenditure by some RM12 billion, are subsidies being actively cut for 2023? We need clarification from the government,” explained him further.
“It is very clear this is a budget for the elite and the rich. Why? When it comes to operating expenditure which is basically the subsidies for the poor people, for the middle class people all these subsidies have been reduced by about RM17 billion reduction compared to this year 2022.”
“So for 2023 we are looking at RM17 billion reduction of subsidies but on the other extreme when it comes to the government spending development expenditure it has gone up to a super high RM97 billion. Those are government contracts, so government contracts benefit whom?”
“It benefits the connected contractors and connected tycoons to the government, they get the government contact and not everybody around the world, only the super rich and super connected get this kind of government contract,” he raised his concerns on his Twitter account.
“RM97 billion is astoundingly high because the average normal is RM50 billion — almost double for development spending. Development spending is a contract. So what do we have here? For the people, reduction in subsidy, for the rich, doubling up in contracts for them.” said the Subang MP.
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