‘Najib being dishonest in accusing govt of misusing fund’

PETALING JAYA: Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak is being dishonest in accusing the government of misusing RM42.2bil from the Consolidated Fund inherited from the previous administration, says Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng.

This is because the former prime minister and the Barisan Nasional government had only left the Pakatan administration with RM450mil as of April 30, Lim said in a statement.

He said Najib should explain a drastic drop of 96% or RM11.41bil in the Consolidated Revenue Account since Dec 31 last year to April 30 this year.

In a Facebook posting on Monday, Najib claimed there was a big possibility that the Pakatan government had used the bulk of the RM42.18bil from the Consolidated Fund, which the previous Barisan Government had left, to make up for the losses or shortfall during the tax holiday period.

Najib alleged that the Pakatan government now wanted to blame the previous Barisan Nasional government for this matter.

Lim said that despite the tax holiday period which took effect from June 1, the unaudited Consolidated Fund position of the Federal government had improved to RM59.9bil as of July 31.

At the same time, the unaudited Consolidated Revenue Account balance had recorded a higher balance of RM3.81bil from RM450mil as of April 30.

This increase in unaudited Consolidated Revenue Account to RM3.81bil on July 31, Lim noted, was an improvement of 8.5 times by Pakatan Harapan compared to Barisan Nasional’s RM450mil.

“Hence, it is not true that the Pakatan Harapan government has misused the Consolidated Fund inherited from the Barisan Nasional government as alleged by Datuk Seri Najib,” Lim said.