“I want to check with the auditor-general. I want him to show me the figures that said 20% of government expenses were lost due to leakages,” Johari said in the Dewan Rakyat today.
He was responding to Ngeh Khoo Ham (DAP-Beruas), who had asked him to state just how much losses the government had made because of leakages.
In the exchange of words that followed, Ngeh said Ambrin himself had claimed that leakages and mismanagement had resulted in the loss of between 10 to 30% of government funds.
Ngeh also quoted Ambrin as saying that contracts issued by the government were priced higher than the market price.
“These were the numbers Ambrin gave in his speech,” said Ngeh, referring to a speech Ambrin had made at the Combating Procurement Fraud in the Public and Private Sectors Forum 2017, in January this year.
At the forum, Ambrin also said that public procurement was one of the government activities that were most vulnerable to corruption, and that fraud in public procurement had caused losses in millions of ringgit in recent years.
However, he added that the government had initiated several measures to address weaknesses in the management of public procurement.
This, he said, included strengthening the role of internal auditors, across-the-board auditing of procurement in government departments and agencies, and having more focused training on procurement management.