THE expenditure performance of projects funded by the Penang government under its development plan for last year was generally unsatisfactory, said the Auditor-General’s Report 2017 Series 2 today.

The report, tabled in Parliament, said the poor performance was because only RM301.38 million of the RM887.44 million allocation was spent.

“The allocation was given out to nine departments for development projects in Penang, and a total of RM301.38 million, or 34%, was spent.

“The low expenditure… was because only RM85.34 million was spent out of the total RM609 million loan allocated to the Penang Development Corporation (PDC) last year.”

It said of the 3,017 projects planned for implementation, 2,942 have been completed, 26 in the process of completion, and the remaining 49 cancelled, not started or “sick”.

“Of the 47 projects that were cancelled, 45 were under the Chief Minister’s Office and State Secretariat’s Office. Among the reasons for their cancellation was name change for the projects, and the allocation used for more crucial works.

“Other factors include the postponement of works due to technical reasons, and there were some projects implemented in 2016 using savings from that year’s funds.”

The report said the main reason for the low expenditure was that the loan allocation to PDC for land procurement was not fully utilised because land prices had increased and the process of procurement could not be carried out.

It added that although there was one “sick” project that has not been completed since 2013, the implementation performance of the state government’s development projects was generally good, with 97.5% of the 3,017 planned projects already completed. – Bernama, December 3, 2018.