PETALING JAYA: Budget 2024, to be presented in Parliament next month, should stress on the principles of good governance to ensure transparency and accountability on how budgetary allocations to government ministries are spent, said a former top civil servant.
Former treasury secretary-general Tan Sri Sheriff Kassim said to boost accountability, detailed analyses on the budget could best be done at the level of parliamentary committees.
“These committees can be organised along sectoral lines such as education and training, health and medical services, agriculture and rural development, defence and internal security,” Sheriff said in a post on social media.
Sheriff, who is also a co-founder of G25, a group of retired top civil servants, said both ministers and civil servants should be called to attend the committee meetings so that MPs could question them on the management of their budgetary allocations, reasons for shortfalls and changes in the expenditure items.
“If the changes are due to political interventions and directives, the committees should investigate further to determine whether there is justification for changes. If there is suspicion of corruption, the committee may want to refer the matter to the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission for further investigation.”
He said as for the MPs, they should be discussing the fiscal policy of how the budget is financed, the borrowing that has to be raised and the government’s plans to deal with fiscal deficit.
Sheriff also raised caution about the nation’s rising debt level, and stressed that care must be taken to see that it is sustainable, although it is currently still manageable.
“Malaysia is fortunate that most of the government borrowings to fund development programmes are from domestic sources. Therefore, it is not so worrying. Nevertheless, it’s good to be prudent especially as oil reserves may start to deplete over the next few years.”
As proposed by a previous speaker of Parliament, MPs should be backed by professional assistance from in-house administrative staff, who should do the necessary research and come up with information papers that can be used by MPs as briefing materials for raising the right questions to the respective ministers.
Sheriff says to boost accountability, detailed analyses on the budget could best be done at the level of parliamentary committees. - BERNAMAPIX
