The government did not borrow from any party, including the World Bank or use the money from the Employees' Provident Fund (EPF) to finance the 1Malaysia People's Aid (BR1M) programme.

In a statement today, the Finance Ministry explained that the government implemented the BR1M programme using allocation from the operational expenditure allocation announced by the Prime Minister, Najib Abdul Razak, in the 2012 Budget.

"Thus, it is clear that the government did not borrow from any party. The government also did not use the EPF money or any local entity to finance the programme," it said.

The BR1M Programme, which aims to ease the burden of the poor and those easily affected by the rise in the cost of living, had received encouraging response from Malaysians earning less than RM3,000.
As of Feb 12, RM602,579,500 worth of BR1M vouchers had been cashed in.

During the same period, 4,597,434 people had made BR1M applications and 3,580,916 applications had been approved.

For those whose applications had been rejected, they could make the BR1M appeal up to March 15 and the special format for the BR1M appeal could be obtained from the branch offices of the Inland Revenue Board (IRB) and could also be downloaded from the Finance Ministry website .

The Finance Ministry said 54,531 appeal application forms had been received and 31,368 appeal applications were still being processed while 21,827 applications had been approved.

It said that among the reasons why the BR1M applications had been rejected were that the application forms were not complete or wrongly filled, the household income exceeded RM3,000 and more than one application were submitted by individuals from the same household.

"The government is most satisfied with the success of the BR1M programme that are being actively implemented. For those who were unsuccessful and have yet to submit their appeal, they are asked to do so immediately," it said.

- Bernama