Warisan’s Merotai assemblyman Sarifuddin Hata came to his party president’s defence today following comments by former assistant finance minister Kenny Chua on the issue.
Yesterday, Chua had agreed with STAR’s Tulid assemblywoman Flovia Ng’s allegation over Shafie’s refusal to pursue the matter until after the fall of the Pakatan Harapan government in February this year.
However, Sarifuddin, who was second assistant finance minister in Shafie’s cabinet, hit out at his former colleague, saying the lack of discussion was due to ongoing talks on the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63).
“While the bill to impose the sales tax was approved in the state assembly on Dec 2, 2018, the state did not impose the tax on oil and gas companies immediately due to ongoing talks by the special Cabinet committee on MA63 at the time.
“The committee was chaired by Mahathir and we know that 17 issues (out of 21) were already resolved while (four) others were still in discussion,” he told FMT.
“So, it wasn’t that Shafie did not want to charge the tax as early as 2019 after the law was passed but we were thinking that if the MA63 committee had agreed to give the 20% oil royalty payment, then there was no need to impose the sales tax (at that time).”
He added that the ceasing of all discussions on MA63 after Perikatan Nasional (PN) took over Putrajaya left Shafie with no other choice.
“At that time, we felt there was no other way to get anything from the committee so that is why the 5% sales tax was immediately imposed on April 1.
“Shafie was never invited for a meeting (in the MA63 committee) nor did PN indicate they will continue talks so he was of the opinion that PN was not interested to pursue the negotiations (started by the previous government).
“Hence, that is why Shafie instructed the state finance ministry to write to all oil and gas companies to settle the 5% payment,” Sarifuddin said.
He then took aim at Chua for not being fair and open when commenting on an issue which he said the latter should be fully aware of.
“As the former assistant finance minister, I sat next to him in the many post-Cabinet meetings and he knows fully well why we didn’t impose the tax immediately. We even spoke about the bill.
“There’s no need to manipulate the issue to confuse the people,” he said, advising Chua to look back at files of the state assembly meeting on Dec 2, 2018.