By RAHIMY RAHIM

KUALA LUMPUR: The Defence Ministry received an additional allocation of RM493.3mil this year, raising the ministry’s budget to a total of RM11bil.

Its minister Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said the supplementary budget was needed to maintain the country’s two Scorpene submarines as well as for administrative purposes.

“The main purpose is to maintain our Scorpene submarines as that expense was not included in the budget,” he told reporters Tuesday when receiving a four-wheel drive vehicle from UNDP under a multidimensional peacekeeping training project, called the Malaysian Peacekeeping Training Project (MPTP), conducted by UNDP and Mindef in Port Dickson.

The Japanese government provided the funding for the project to the tune of RM3mil (USD1mil), which was channelled through the UNDP, he said.

“The project offers a platform for Malaysia to share its peacekeeping expertise and experience with Asian and African countries.

“To fulfil those requirements, we have been working with the UNDP in Malaysia to create new training modules which we hope will be a mainstream programme in the coming years. It will include civil-military coordination, gender-related issues, sexual violence and the security of women in armed conflicts,” he said.