KUCHING: Political Secretary to the Chief Minister Michael Tiang wonders why Sarawak will go bankrupt in three years and why the Sarawak government needs to spend the state’s reserves when it has extra revenues to spend on the state developments and expenditures.
Tiang said this in response to Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng’s remark recently that Sarawak would go bankrupt in three years.
“Just by implementing the five per cent petroleum products sales tax starting last January, the Sarawak government will collect RM3.8 billion this year and in fact, RM2 billion has been collected since last January.
“Pakatan Harapan (PH) as the federal government only allocated RM4.3 billion for Sarawak’s annual development funds! As a parent (the federal government) should be feeding its child (Sarawak)! But in our case, the opposite is true. It is Sarawak’s resources and wealth that actually sustain the national developments which are mainly focused in Malaya,” said Tiang.
He added that hence, Lim, as the finance minister, owed Sarawak a duty to promote Sarawak’s financial and economic growth, and bring more investments into Sarawak since Sarawak was a critical contributor of revenues to Malaysia.
“And definitely, he should not be making such an irresponsible and untruthful speculation that Sarawak will go bankrupt in 3 years.
“It’s plain foolishness for a finance minister to say those words in public.
“I have never seen any finance ministers in other countries saying anything that would tarnish the financial integrity of their country. Lim would be the first and therefore, a laughing stock to others.
“I want to ask our finance minister, “Who will bear the losses caused by investors shying away from Sarawak due to his above statement?
“I would also want to remind Lim not to even try to label and treat Sarawak as an opposition state. Sarawak is one of the three founding states of the Federation of Malaysia, not an opposition state.
“Sarawak is constitutionally entitled to our national resources and wealth sharing as an equal partner, regardless of which political camp is now governing Sarawak!
“You may treat Pahang or Kelantan as opposition states since they are part of Malaya, but when it comes to Sarawak government, the federal government is constitutionally obliged to work and cooperate with the GPS-led Sarawak government as the government of the day elected by Sarawakians,” he pointed out.
