PETALING JAYA: The government’s Consolidated Revenue Account has seen a drastic drop of 96%, or RM11.41bil from January to April this year, says Lim Guan Eng.

The Finance Minister said it was clear that the excessive spending by the previous Barisan Nasional administration were carried out in the months preceding the 14th General Election.

“It has not been an easy five months since May 9.

"Despite being left with only RM450mil by the previous government, the new Pakatan Harapan government is still able to meet all our monthly financial commitments, especially in paying the monthly RM8bil in salaries and pensions of civil servants, including bonuses,” he said in a statement.

The breakdown of the figures provided by Lim showed that the Consolidated Revenue Account dropped from RM11.86bil in December to RM5.73bil in January and continued to drop in February (RM5.34bil), March (RM3.91bil) and April (RM450mil).

Lim said Accountant General Datuk Saat Esa had confirmed that only monies in the Consolidated Revenue Account could be used for government expenditure, and not from the Consolidated Fund.

“Datuk Saat further confirmed that there was only RM450mil left to spend on April 30, when Barisan handed power to Pakatan on May 9.

“There are those who claim otherwise, citing the funds in the Cash Account as proof that Barisan left Pakatan with billions of ringgit.

“This is unfortunately not true. Not all monies in the Cash Account can be used for Government expenditure,” said Lim.

He explained that the Cash Account and the Investment Account, both formed a common pool of cash collected, deposited or invested and held for three separate accounts - Consolidated Revenue Account, Consolidated Loan Account and Consolidated Trust Account.

He said the amount in the Cash Account and Investment Account could not be spent entirely for government expenditure because they did not belong to the Consolidated Revenue Account entirely.