Guan Eng urges developers to reduce house price

KUALA LUMPUR: Land prices are dependent on locality and are decided by market forces, said Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng.
"At the end of the day, it's outside the government's control. It's too big for us to really influence market prices. What we can do is save cost for housing developers and we hope that housing developers will also give us a positive response," he told a press conference after launching the Institute of Corporate Directors Malaysia (ICDM) here today.
Lim has urged developers to reduce house prices as construction materials and services are exempted from the Sales and Service Tax (SST), or the government will review the waiver.
Former Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak criticised Putrajaya’s threat to revoke tax exemptions for building materials if the price of houses did not drop, arguing that the cost was not based on raw materials alone.

Najib, who was the former finance minister, said the biggest factor in determining the price of a house was land cost.