Posted on 21 October 2013 - 02:07pm
Last updated on 21 October 2013 - 10:40pm
Hemananthani Sivanandam
KUALA LUMPUR (Oct 21, 2013): The Pakatan Rakyat has forecast a 5.2% economic growth and a deficit of RM34 billion or 3.2% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the year 2014 in its shadow budget.
In announcing the summary of the shadow budget, Opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim said the estimation is done after taking into consideration the fragile and uncertain global economy conditions, but stressed that the deficit estimation by Pakatan Rakyat is lower than the one estimated by Barisan Nasional (BN).
He added that Pakatan estimates that BN's deficit will be between 3.8% to 4% due to their failure in combating corruption and leakages.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak will be tabling the government's 2014 Budget this Friday, Oct 25.
Anwar said in Pakatan's alternative budget, several measures will also be taken to reduce the spending. Among them is to rationalise cost for each ministry and government departments to reduce operational expenditure by 10%.
This, Anwar said, can be achieved by temporarily postponing the allowance increase of Cabinet ministers and government department heads.
Pakatan said it will also reassess the spending priority by reducing or eliminating several programs such as the National Service.
Anwar also said Pakatan will postpone the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and re-introducing high Real Property Tax Gains (RPTG) rates to prevent speculation.
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