VIDEO l  2:38 mins

Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim has likened his debate on the Budget 2014 akin to "talking to the deaf" due to the absence of Prime Minister and Finance Minister Najib Abdul Razak to listen to his debate.

NONE"Debating in Parliament here, it's like talking to the deaf," Anwar said during his debate, after Anthony Loke Siew Fook (DAP-Seremban) pointed out that no senior minister was present in the House to listen to the opposition leader's take on the budget.

Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Shahidan Kassim was the only cabinet member present during the debate.

Even Finance Minister II Ahmad Husni Hanadzlah was absent

"When I was the finance minister, if I tabled a budget on a Friday, I would come on Monday to listen to Gelang Patah (Lim Kit Siang, then Opposition leader)," Anwar said.

"Of course, sometimes (listening to Lim at the time) hurts my ears, but that is the practise of democracy," he added.

Anwar also claimed that the government, since being helmed by Najib, had "underestimated" it expenditure by an average of seven percent annually, resulting in supplementary budgets being tabled to plug the expenditure later in the fiscal year.

"The average rate of our expenditure growth is nine percent a year while our economic growth is only between four and five percent a year. This is untenable," he said.

NONEAnwar noted that since Najib became prime minister, the government had overseen a consistent increase in operating expenditure, with an average increase of RM22 billion, or 13 percent, annually.

In contrast, he said the development expenditure allocated by the government has decreased over the past five years, at an average reduction of RM2 billion a year, or five percent annually.

Anwar said before Najib's era, the government used to allocate about 30 to 35 percent of the budget for development expenditure, but this has reduced drastically to only 20 percent of the budget under Najib.

The government has also abled two supplementary budgets every year since 2009, and based on that, Anwar said that the actual expenditure of the government would increase by another 10 percent over the numbers give in the 2014 Budget.

"Most probably the national deficit (for 2014) would increase to be higher than the 3.5 percent that the government has forecast for 2014," he said.

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