Malaysian PM Mahathir Mohamad said the Najib Razak government may have falsified the country’s figures recording the country’s financial position.
Mahathir said Malaysia is saddled with over 1 trillion ringgit (US$251.70 billion) in debt, blaming the previous government for the impediment.
The irony is that Najib had warned Malaysians ahead of the May 9th elections (on March 13) that a Pakatan Harapan government would cause debts to rise to RM1.1 trillion.
Was he trying to say when Pakatan takes over, the debt figure will immediately be RM1.1 trillion?
“We have never had to deal with this before. Before we never faced debts higher than 300 billion ringgit, but now it has climbed to 1 trillion ringgit,” he said.
The elderly statesman said the country’s finances was abused in a way that now the country is facing trouble settling the debts.
“We find that the country’s finances, for example, was abused in a way that now we are facing trouble settling debts that have risen to a trillion ringgit,” Mahathir said when speaking for the first time to the staff of the prime minister’s office.
The true picture of the country’s finances became evident during the first day in office of newly appointed Minister of Finance Lim Guan Eng, the former Chief Minister of Penang.
On the 15th of May, the then Finance Minister-designate Lim said there’s a lot of work to be done after he examined the nation’s financial records.
Guan Eng said the government will work on improving the situation, however, he did not reveal details.
Najib had said in March that the opposition pact’s election manifesto, which promised to abolish the goods and services tax (GST) and existing road traffic toll counters, would plunge the nation into a further RM416 billion debt on top of the existing RM685 billion debt.