Najib slams Finance Ministry over contradictory SST statements

PETALING JAYA: Pekan MP Datuk Seri Najib Razak (pic) has taken a jab at the Finance Ministry over its contradictory statements on the Sales and Service Tax (SST).

In a Facebook post on Tuesday (Oct 16), Najib highlighted previous news reports quoting the political secretary to the Finance Minister, Tony Pua, as saying that SST would reduce the prices of goods.

Najib pointed out that Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng had on Monday (Oct 15) denied this, saying that prices of goods would come down once the Goods and Services Tax (GST) was replaced with the SST.

“Their communication strategy is great; different person, different story,” Najib quipped.

“Just like the mistake with the decimal point, I think our Finance Ministry is confused over the SST,” he added, referring to Lim’s announcement that the GST trust account had only RM1.486bil deposited in it, only to later correct himself and say it was RM148.6mil.

Lim said the mistake was due to a ministry official misplacing a decimal point.

Najib also questioned the benefits of replacing the GST with the SST.

“The government does not have enough revenue to help the people today and I am worried about the new taxes that will be introduced,” he said.