SHAH ALAM, 27 Oct: The reduction of subsidies and the imposing of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) is not a solution to the country’s economic problems which stems from the improvident attitude in Umno-BN’s spending.
PAS Information Chief, Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man said the implementation of the GST can only be done when the Umno-BN takes responsibility to reduce its operational management and not continue to be improvident with public money.
He said that the people are not given a period to adjust to the GST when it is announced at the high rate of 6 percent starting from 1 April 201.
“With the GST, those who do not have cars and do not have permanent jobs so as to not quality to pay taxed on every purchase,” he said in a statement.
Tuan Ibrahim said, in Singapore, the GST was introduced at a rate of 3 percent before gradually increasing to 7 percent.
“Some say that villagers will not feel the burden of the GST. It should be reminded that most of the items sold in grocery stores in villages come from suppliers in the city.
“The goods would already be subject to the GST when they arrive at the grocery store. Although small grocery stores are exempt from the GST because it does not exceed the minimum procurement, goods sold to village communities would certainly be more expensive because it would already been subject to the GST by suppliers,” he said.
Member of Parliament for Petaling Jaya Utara, Tony Pua said that the government’s move to impose the GST is not able to hide their failure in controlling excessive spending since the deficit remains the same.
The additional collection in tax as specified in the Economic Report 2013/2014 should help alleviate the chronic deficit to 2.6 percent, but instead it remains unchanged at the four percent forecast.
“Although the government collects much higher that the revenues expected, the deficit for 2013 remains unchanged at RM39.3 billion.
“This means that every cent of additional revenue collected by the government is immediately spent, rather than contributing to reduce the debt,” he said.