BN govt never hid national debt, says Najib

PETALING JAYA: The previous BN government had been transparent and had never hidden the figures of the national debt, embattled former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak said today.
The former Umno president said he is glad that Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng has come clean in his statement yesterday that the official federal government debt remains at RM686.8 billion, and not RM1 trillion as previously claimed.
"All these figures are published in Treasury Reports, BNM reports, Accountant General reports, Auditor General Reports every year without fail," he said.
In a Facebook post today, Najib said the national debt of RM686.8 billion is 50.8% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is much lower than the 103.4% reached during the first reign of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
"The previous government had always complied with international public debt reporting guidelines as defined by the IMF and World Bank. Therefore, the figure of 50.8% is a universally accepted measurement," he said.
"Contingent obligations, such as guarantees, have never been included in the official measurement of government debt, not even during Tun Mahathir's previous reign."
Market analysts, economists and investors are all well aware of these numbers, which are manageable and can be serviced, a fact confidently admitted, by the Minister of Finance himself, Najib said.
"Therefore, we did not hide RM300 billion of debts or falsified figures as alleged. The spade had always been called a spade as per universally accepted guidelines," he said.
"Now that the truth is revealed about this 'RM1 trillion national debt', we congratulate the new government for unnecessarily spooking the market which has led to sharp falls of our stock exchange this week - capping 14 consecutive days of foreign capital outflows.
"This debacle has led to real losses to stock market investors and our GLCs such as EPF, KWAP, Khazanah and Tabung Haji. I hope and pray that PH government ministers will be more careful in making assertions in future."