DEPUTY Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi has firmly defended the Rural and Regional Development Ministry against accusations of financial recklessness, insisting the agency strictly adheres to its government-approved budget.
Speaking at a strategic cooperation workshop involving the ministry's Rural Community Centres and National Information Dissemination Centres, Zahid shot back at recent questions regarding fiscal discipline.
"Has any ministry ever spent more than it was allocated? How could the ministry possibly spend beyond what was announced in the Budget speech?" he said.
Also present at the event were Communications Minister Datuk Seri Fahmi Fadzil and Deputy Rural and Regional Development Minister Datuk Rubiah Wang.
The remarks follow recent friction with the Ministry of Finance.
On Wednesday, Treasury secretary-general Tan Sri Johan Mahmood Merican stated that payment delays for rural projects arose because the ministry had nearly exhausted its annual funds.
Official figures showed that by June, the ministry had already spent RM1.9 billion of its RM2.1 billion allocation for rural-road projects this year.
While the Finance Ministry subsequently greenlit an additional RM300 million to help ease the bottleneck, the Rural Ministry's press secretary, Fadzmel Fadzil, countered that the injection is still not enough to clear a backlog of contractor claims.
Fadzmel attributed the heavy commitments to pandemic-era delays, citing contractual letters issued between 2019 and 2021.
Amid the back-and-forth, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim has stepped in, urging both ministries to sit down and settle the rural-road payment dispute amicably.
Shifting focus back to fiscal accountability, Zahid issued a tongue-in-cheek warning to the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC).
Pointing to MCMC Chairman Tan Sri Mohamad Salim Fateh Din, Zahid quipped that even a well-funded agency must strictly follow Treasury guidelines, "otherwise, he will lose his job sooner."
Zahid also challenged the ministry to look beyond traditional key performance indicators.
He stressed that success should not be judged merely by the number of programmes held or funds cleared, but by real, ground-level impact—such as youth employment, increased sales for local entrepreneurs, and tangible boosts to household incomes. – September 7, 2026
