Datuk Seri Wong Soon Koh (PSB-Bawang Assan) has urged Sarawak government to abolish the five per cent sales tax on tyres as it will benefit all car and vehicles owners.
Wong said that he would like to raise this issue after receiving numerous calls from tyre dealers who requested the government to do away with the sales tax.
“I noticed that the sales tax on tyres collected is a mere RM3 million. I received numerous calls from tyre dealers requesting the government to scrap the five per cent sales tax on all types of tyres.
“Now that our state overall revenue has breached RM11 billion, I would like to urge Sarawak government to abolish the sales tax on tyres to lighten the burden of our people who own vehicles,” Wong said during the debate on the State Budget 2023 at the State Legislative Assembly (DUN) sitting today.
Meanwhile, Wong has credited Premier Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri Abang Johari Tun Openg for his re-engineering effort in generating revenue by imposing sales tax since 2019.
“Sarawak is projected to collect a revenue of RM11.035 billion, surpassing RM11 billion for the first time.
“Since the imposition of sales tax in 2019, Sarawak revenue had annually surpassed RM10 billion and this credit must go to our Premier for his effort,” Wong added.
However, he revealed that he noticed there is a sharp drop for 2023 on non-tax revenue, namely interest income which amounted to only RM650 million.
“All along, our interest income had always surpassed RM1 billion and we know that interest income is derived from the interest accrued on deposits of our reserve fund with the commercial banks or money loaned to Development Bank of Sarawak (DBoS).
“Can the Ministry of Finance explain why there is a sharp drop in interest income since 2021 and could it be due to the reduction in our reserve fund or we fetched lower interest rate from the commercial banks?
“How much is our reserve fund now and how much of the reserve fund has been transferred to DBoS?
“Is DBoS paying interest as what all other commercial banks do?” Wong concluded.
