Perak’s debt reaching a dizzying billion ringgit

Harakahdaily

Nov 24: Perak’s state debt has sky-rocketed some 535 percent from RM182 million in 2000 to RM975 million currently, with a RM72 million increase in the past 12 months. Reacting to this, Taiping member of parliament Nga Kor Ming (pic) said the state’s debt for last year was greater than the budget for all state projects such as the micro scheme credit, housing aid, food aid, festival aid, Tabaruk scheme and family economic cluster scheme. “All those programmes for the people only amount to RM19 million,” he was quoted as saying by DAP's Malay language website Roketkini, at the state’s Budget 2012 debate yesterday.On the recently tabled RM50.14 million deficit budget, the Pantai Remis state assemblyman questioned the allocation of RM915 million for expenditure. “The amount is just too huge for Perak," he said, adding that the Economic Planning Unit of the Prime Minister’s Department reported that Perak has the highest number of families in the poverty brackets. Nga said some 192,000 families in the state earned less than RM2,300 a month, representing 12.2 percent of all families in the country under the poverty group. “This clearly proves that after 54 years under BN, not only has the coalition failed to bring up the state to a respectable income earning status, many of our people still live in poverty, especially the Malays,” he added. Nga described the state budget as wasteful and aimed to enrich the cronies while using debts to fish for votes by giving out goodies. "This is just an election budget. But the people see through all this. It may just help PR to win,” he quipped.