Lim dismissed as false and misleading Opposition leader Jahara Hamid’s (Umno-Telok Ayer Tawar) claim that the more than 400 per cent increase in allocation to the Chief Minister’s and State Secretary’s offices (CMO and SSO) was a “manipulation of figures”.
“As I have said yesterday, the additional allocation to the offices was for developments on the mainland.
“The Auditor-General has approved our finances year-on-year and we are one of the best in the country. We also pride ourselves in being the earliest to hand in our financial statements.
“All our books are in order; do not say we have manipulated numbers. Her statement is hence a false statement,” Lim said in a press conference at the state Legislative Assembly today.
Yesterday, Lim said the RM707 million allocation to CMO and SSO under the Penang Budget 2017 was inflated by the RM609 million loan to state investment agency Penang Development Corporation (PDC).
PDC was given the loan to expand its land bank in Seberang Prai, among others.
Jahara was of the opinion that the loan to PDC was not necessary as the state agency had acquired lands using its own funds.
She said it was odd for a loan to be extended to PDC as the allocation could have been funnelled through the state’s consolidated funds.
She said that PDC would already have made a lot of money from previous land sales, such as the Batu Kawan estate land.
Jahara questioned why the huge profit earned from the land sale could not be used to expand PDC’s land bank.
“Today, the state government increases the allocation and at the end of the year it will say: ‘Look, we have increased our revenue.’ The people will have forgotten that this is a loan repayment.
“This is a manipulation of figures,” she was quoted as saying in the New Straits Times.
In response to Lim’s denial, Jahara said she stood by her comment.
“I regret that he has now even manipulated my comments.
“I had merely said that when PDC repaid the loan to the government, it would appear as revenue for the government. That is a fact,” she told reporters outside the chambers of the Penang Legislative Assembly today.