Second Finance Minister Johari Abdul Ghani said the additional allocation was necessary in view of several unavoidable important matters.
“Government agencies have to adhere to the existing budget allocation. If they need an additional budget, they have to produce justification to enable them to continue with the programmes. They have to produce a detailed report,” he said.
“Unless, of course, there is a catastrophe which calls for an immediate allocation,” he said when winding up debate on the bill.
He also said that seeking a supplementary budget was an ordinary matter annually in Parliament.
“We always seek supplementary budgets. In the period from 1995 to 1997, supplementary budgets were sought four times, from 2001 to 2002 four times, from 2006 to 2007 twice, and from 2016 to 2017 once,” he said.
The additional expenditure would be allocated to, among others, the education ministry (RM891.1 million), home ministry (RM804.27 million), agriculture and agro-based industry ministry (RM685.49 million), health ministry (RM479.07 million), and communications and multimedia ministry (RM24.3 million).
The Election Commission would get RM82.07 million and the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission RM35 million.
The bill will be debated at the committee stage tomorrow.