KUALA LUMPUR: The Ministry of Defence has received an increase in allocation at RM15.86 billion as announced in the 2021 Budget which clearly demonstrates the government’s deep commitment to national defence priorities.
Senior Defence Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob (pix) said that this is an increase of 1.8 per cent or RM280 million compared with the previous year’s RM15.58 billion.
He said that this was due to the uncertain security environment as well as non-traditional security threats. These two factors require a high level of readiness of the Malaysian Armed Forces (MAF).
He added that a significant increase was the allocation for development expenditure (DE) at RM4.50 billion, an increase of RM1.42 billion or 46.1 per cent.
“The allocation for operating expenditure (OE) is RM11.35 billion, a drop of RM1.14 billion or 9.1 per cent.
“This reduction is due to the large increase in DE allocations for maintenance and upgrading of key assets of the MAF to ensure its readiness is always at the highest level,” he said. -Bernama
More to come
