Sarawak has constitutional right to impose sales tax — Sharifah Hasidah

SARAWAK has the right to enforce sales tax on petroleum products, Sharifah Hasidah Sayeed Aman Ghazali told Borneo Post Online in an interview at her office in the Sarawak State Legislative Assembly building yesterday.

The Assistant Minister of Law, State-Federal Relations and Project Monitoring said this tax is based on Sarawak’s constitutional rights to impose sales tax.

“This will be new revenue for our state, and will be levied on petroleum products effective from 1st January 2019 on crude oil; natural gas; liquefied natural gas; chemical-based fertilisers and gas to liquid products,” she added.

She stressed that the tax would not cause hardship to the people of Sarawak as it is not imposed on the ordinary rakyat.

“The income from the sales tax will be used to implement development projects in rural Sarawak, especially to revive vital projects that were being cancelled by the Pakatan Harapan ( PH) federal government,” she said, pointing out that many projects approved by the previous regime had been abruptly cancelled by PH government, purportedly as cost saving measure and so- called austerity drive.

“Many projects were cancelled but with the big revenue and largest budget in Sarawak’s history, we will be able to implement them using our own money derived from the new sales tax on these petroleum products which is estimated to be at a sum of RM3.897 billion in 2019,” she explained.

She informed that the total state revenue for 2019 is projected at RM10.513 billion, an increase of RM3.547 billion or 51 per cent over the revised revenue estimates of RM6.966 billion for 2018.

“This will be the first time the state is expected to achieve such a record high revenue of more than RM10 billion,” she added, saying the huge revenue is crucial to enable the state to move forward with its development agenda for the benefit of all Sarawakians.

As such, she reminded the opposition to be extra careful before making wild accusation that the state government will be exhausting the state’s reserve to implement development projects.

“Although the PH government is giving only 7.4 per cent of the total development expenditure to Sarawak contrary to 30 per cent promised by PH, we know how to source for the income to finance important development projects such as building roads, bridges and water supply projects.

“This budget is proof that the opposition’s accusation that we will be exhausting the Sarawak government reserve is wrong, and I sincerely hope they will be more careful and responsible in the future because they are talking as if we know nothing about economy,” she stressed.