Najib said Lim had been playing with statistics to paint a positive picture of the country’s finances.
He claimed yesterday that the country’s debt and liabilities had gone up from RM1 trillion to RM1.1 trillion. “When he was slammed by the rakyat, today he said the debt-to-GDP ratio has actually gone down 3.9%,” Najib said in a Facebook posting.
In a statement today, Lim said the federal government’s rationalisation of “overpriced” projects and public-private partnership payments had lowered the country’s debt level to 75.4% of gross domestic product.
He acknowledged that direct government borrowings had gone up but said that measures taken had resulted in a 3.9 percentage point decline in the debt-to-GDP ratio in 2018.
However, Najib said Lim was playing with figures by lumping together direct debt, government guarantees, lease payments and payments for public-private partnership (PPP) projects.
Najib said this method was counter to the methods used by other governments, where only direct borrowings was used to denote a country’s national debt.
“Today, Guan Eng confirmed that the total amount and direct debt ratio had gone up, and the total amount and the ratio of government guarantees had also gone up.
“He said the decline is due to the reduction in costs of mega projects such as the LRT3, MRT2 and the East Coast Rail Link (ECRL). This is a big lie because the project costs had not been included in the PPP component, but the government guarantee component,” he said, adding that a lot of the guarantees have not been made as the projects were ongoing.
Najib questioned how Lim could claim that the PPP had plunged. He also asked why the finance minister had stated that the PPP included lease payments and government rent until 2045.
“When he said the PPP has gone down, he dared not specifically say if the PPP were for projects or rents which have dropped,” he said.
Najib also said that the Pakatan Harapan (PH) government had early last month suddenly implemented rebasing of the GDP from the 2010 base year to 2015.
He said that when rebasing is carried out, “we are actually playing with figures and statistics which can provide a different picture and figures, based on previously announced data”.
“Hence, the GDP value in constant pricing for 2018 all of a sudden went up from RM1.23 trillion in March, to RM1.36 trillion after rebasing.
“So, because the data for the GDP value went up all of a sudden, the debt-to-GDP ratio also went down.
“The reality is that the total value and direct debt ratio, as well as government-guaranteed debt has drastically increased under the PH government. That is a fact,” he added.