KUCHING: Sarawak welcomes the federal government's decision to fully allocate tourism tax collections to the respective states, says Datuk Seri Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah.
The state Tourism, Creative Industry and Performing Arts Minister said this would boost the state's development efforts, along with other allocations from Putrajaya.
"This is very much welcome news, and I hope Sarawak will get a big share.
"Anything forthcoming from the federal government, whether in tourism tax, development funds or an increase in royalty, we will always welcome.
"Sarawak is a big state and we need as much funding as possible to develop the state," he told a press conference here on Friday (March 6).
On Thursday, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim said the federal government will channel 100% of tourism tax collections to the respective states, compared to the current practice of allocating only 50%.
This was agreed by the National Finance Council during its meeting on Thursday, as part of its decision to increase federal government funds to state governments this year.
Besides the distribution of tourism tax, Anwar said the increase also involves Shared List grants and state road maintenance grants.
Meanwhile, Abdul Karim said discussions were ongoing with the federal government on Sarawak and Sabah's proposal to move tourism from the federal list to the concurrent list in the Ninth Schedule of the Federal Constitution.
He said this was discussed at the recent Malaysia Agreement 1963 Implementation Action Council's technical committee meeting in Kuala Lumpur.
"Sabah and Sarawak see tourism as an important matter. We don't want to take everything, we want to share it with the federal government.
"That's why we proposed to the federal government to move it to the concurrent list. These are things we want to share together for the good of the nation," he said.
Abdul Karim said the proposal still faced "a little bit of objection", but expressed cautious optimism for a positive outcome.
"I believe it will lead to that at the end of the day. As a last resort, if we can't resolve it, we will bring it to court," he added.
