Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Econs 101 for Minister of Finance Najib Razak

One would hope that the minister running the finance ministry knows a little finance. Unfortunately,  this does not seems to be the case.

Few days ago, BERNAMA quotes the Minister of Finance cum the Prime Minister saying the following :


"Without the GST, the Pan Borneo Highway could not have been implemented, not possible for this Jalan Kapit-Song-Kanowit to be carried out......it is not enough to bring development especially to the rural areas" . Link here



This is wrong. There are two reasons why we think the Minister of Finance needs to take Malaysia Econs 101. 


First, any student of Malaysian Economy knows that all monies and revenue raised goes into the Consolidated Fund. In fact, this is as per Article 97 of our constitution. We do not have separate account for GST, or from oil revenue, nor for any other sources of income, of which can be used to pay stuff or build things.  All income collected goes into ONE single fund. Which means we do not know if the  GST collected is used to finance the Jalan Kapit-Song-Kanowit, or it is financed by oil mone, or even from tax collected from gaming companies. 


Second, development expenditure in Malaysia is not financed by the revenue collected, but rather via borrowing. We have only enough money to pay for operational expenses such as emoluments, debt service charges, grants and transfers to state governments, etc, but not enough for building road, schools, etc. The Minister misled us, we have to borrow money to build the Pan Borneo highway. It is not financed by GST.



Maybe the Minister should go back to university to finish his studies, or simply let serious person runs the ministry. That shall spare us for reading silly stuff uttered by the most incompetent Minister of Finance in the history of Malaysia.


He must be mindful of what he says. So far, he is not helping to boost confidence among the rakyat. Evidence: consumer sentiment is at all-time low! 




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