By Syauqi Jamil
KUALA LUMPUR: Freshly minted Public Account Committee (PAC) Chairman Dr Ronald Kiandee will exercise his powers to start an investigation on the allegedly ‘missing’ RM18 billion in Goods and Services Tax (GST) repayment fund.
“The funds that was said to be missing should be brought forward at the next proceeding.”
“I will use my powers to bring this matters to the PAC,” he said in a press conference in Parliament earlier.”
Kiandee who is also the Barisan Nasional (BN) Beluran MP said the allegations and explanation made by Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng yesterday are contradictory.
The former Deputy Speaker said that Lim had accused the previous BN government of ‘robbing’ the fund before initiating a probe on the matter.
“He accused the previous government of stealing money before he initiated an investigation. Its contradicting,” he said.
Kiandee said Lim is talking as if its wrong to put the money from the GST repayment fund into consolidated funds when he today admitted that it was a procedure permitted by the Finance Ministry.
He added, based on the existing standard operational procedure, the funds can be requested to be withdrawn from the consolidated funds to be redeposited into the GST trust fund (tabung Amanah).
“But the (finance) minister assumed as if it was a breach that was not supposed to be done by the previous government,” he said.
Yesterday, Lim Guan revealed that a whopping amount of roughly RM18 billion were missing from the GST Repayment Fund.
He said as based on the Customs Department record, the sum of overdue GST refund currently sits at RM19.4 billion but stated that the current balance in the Repayment Fund is only around RM1.5 billion.
The Bagan MP said the funds were supposed to be deposited by the government, but told the Dewan Rakyat that the previous Barisan Nasional (BN) government had ‘robbed the rakyat of their money’.
He said the refund which is called an ‘input tax’, can be claimed by manufacturer, producer or even merchant.