Media statement by Dr. Hiew King Cheu in Kota Kinabalu on Wednesday, 28^th March 2012:

Heavy Federal Government debts

The figures from the Ministry of Finance given in Parliament recently has shown that the Federal Government has incurred a huge debts of around RM 456.1billions, where RM438billions is internal debts (96%) and RM 18.1 billion is under foreign debts.

The huge debts incurred by the Federal administration has reflected that the financial status of the Malaysian government is surviving on borrowings. This is also telling us that the government can not earn or make enough money to manage the country, but merely living on borrowed money, which is the people's blood and sweat money in the case of EPF.

The situation as very critical, and it looks very true that a while ago a BN Minister had sounded out Malaysia will be bankrupt in the year 2019.

Why the weak Malaysian currency has fallen far behind from our neighbours Singapore and Brunei, and this is an indicator that the Malsysia economy is not that promising, and not claimed as doing well. We have fallen far behind due to some obvious and apparent reasons, and that is all due to the bad management of the country's economy. Why Singapore and Brunei can do well and we can't? In fact we have a lot of natural resources and huge area of land coupled with huge oil and gas reserve, and we should be doing well, but what went wrong? Others can do it and we can't!

The Federal government took RM144.5 billion from EPF until December 2011. EPF money is being borrowed constantly and taken fast by the government to feed the expenditures of the various needs, and it is estimated equivalent to some 60% of the EPF coffer. The most recent withdrawal from EPF coffer near to RM 1.3 billion is for the use to pay out the BR1M. The government is using the people's money to pay to the people.

In Sabah, infact we have the same problem that the state government is owing the Federal government some money, and in fact what the Prime Minister has mentioned during his last visit saying that Sabah is doing well, is not true. If we are doing well, there should be no debts. In Penang, it is doing well and it has no debts, in spite of has very little or no natural resources. It is all boils down to good financial management.

How long can we survive with the building up of debts?

* Dr Hiew King Cheu, MP for Kota Kinabalu