KUCHING: Youth and Sports Assistant Minister Datuk Snowdan Lawan said federal Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng’s remark was intended to discredit the state government over its budgetary spending on infrastructures which the federal government could not halt, but rather chose not to provide the fund instead.
Snowdan, who is also Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS) Youth chief said this when commenting on Lim’s remark where he claimed that Sarawak would be bankrupt in three years’ time if the state continues with its annual RM11 billion budget and used up its RM30 billion reserves.
“Lim envies Sarawak’s financial prudence, but his remark is blatant, unqualified and an unsupported statement made by a supposedly accountable federal Finance Minister of Malaysia,” said Snowdan.
He added that Lim certainly spoke without reference to facts, statistics and figures available.
“It’s our rights to develop our state with our own resources yet within our means,” he said and asked why Lim need to be envious of the state government’s capabilities.
“Lim may have forgotten that budget spending is upon the projected revenue generated. The state wouldn’t have come up with such budget without considering its parallel income and GDP earnings.
“Our reserve is for liquidity purposes, which we may not touch if projected revenue, including our new sales tax proceeds, is sufficient,” he explained.
According to Snowdan, Sarawak still has her A3 stable rating by Moody’s in its April 2019 report, but Lim didn’t even refer to that.
He said Lim purportedly thought that he was only speaking to a “farmers and laymen” audience when claiming Sarawak would be bankrupt in three years.
