SHAH ALAM, August 5: The DAP Publicity Secretary, Tony Pua said that the Federal Government should not punish the people by introducing the Goods and Services Tax (GST) while corruption, wastage and leakage is tolerated.
While the Malaysian government itself has caused Malaysia to be suffering a budget deficit for 15 years with soaring debt.
At the same time, 85 percent of the people in this country do not earn a decent income to enable them to pay taxes.
In relation to that, DAP has warned the Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak to not use Malaysia’s negative position in the Fitch Ratings analysis as an excuse to implement the GST.
“The move may be appropriate for the short term, like a ‘Panadol’ for Malaysia, but it will certainly fail to cure the Malaysian financial ‘cancer’.
“The GST only acts to postpone the crisis by increasing government revenue, however if the government continues to waste with cronyism and corruption, no amount of taxes will be able to cover the national expenditure,” he stressed in a statement today.
Taking the example of Greece, the Petaling Jaya Utara Member of Parliament said that the European country still failed to overcome bankruptcy even after taking steps to introduce the GST at the rate of 23 percent.
“The ore tax is collected, the more leakage will occur.
“Instead, the government should take a more effective approach such as reducing reliance on contingent liability financing, adopting an open tender system and to increase transparency at all levels of the government budgeting process to fight corruption,” he added.