KUALA LUMPUR: Former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak has taken another swipe at detractors who blame him and 1Malaysia Developmen Bhd for the state of the national economy.
He said both he and 1MDB should not be blamed for the country's weakening currency and the almost doubling of the national debt.
In a Facebook post, Najib said the economy was stronger throughout his tenure as prime minister and the ringgit had recovered from RM4.40 to RM3.86 one and a half years before the 14th General Election (GE14).
This was in response to a podcast by a minister who had blamed him and 1MDB for the weakening ringgit and debt surge.
"The value of national assets also continued to increase, the share market rose to its highest level in history, dividends and grants from the national savings funds remained high, haj package costs never increased.
"Malaysia's credit rating remained at A throughout, pensions were never withdrawn and were even given an automatic two per cent increase every year, and the deficit and national debt ratio decreased for eight consecutive years.
"In fact, the 1MDB debt has been fully paid off without using a single sen from the government and still has many remaining valuable assets such as the TRX project worth RM40 billion, the Bandar Malaysia project worth RM140 billion, and land in Penang worth RM2 billion," he said.
Najib said, however, when the new government took over, they abolished the goods and services tax (GST), reinstated bulk subsidies and caused political instabilities.
"They abolished the GST and replaced it with the sales and services tax (SST) where the government lost RM30 billion a year where this, quantified to the six years they were in power, equates to RM180 billion.
"This does not take into account the government's loss of revenue from corporate tax evasion where it is difficult to quantify.
"They also reinstated bulk subsidies after I had rationalised them which led to the government's burden increasing by an average of RM30 billion a year."
Najib said economic growth also slowed down after GE14, leading to sluggish government revenues from various taxes.
As a result, he Najib, the government deficit and the ratio of national debt to gross domestic product (GDP) increased after GE14 compared to the downward trend in the eight years he was the prime minister.
"Consequently, national debt increased from RM686.8 billion at the end of 2017 during my time to RM1.2 trillion today.
"The ratio of national debt to GDP soared from 48.7 per cent at the end of Q1 2018 before GE14 to 65 per cent today.
"Therefore, our country lost our A credit rating and was downgraded to a B grade in 2020 where the country became the only country in Asean to be downgraded in credit rating in the past six years and has not been upgraded back to A rating until today."
Najib added that another cause of the weakening economy was the political instability caused by various political moves such as the "Sheraton Move" and the "Dubai Move", as well as the "I have strong and convincing numbers" claim.
"And now you want to blame Najib and 1MDB after Najib has not been PM for six years? Banyak pandai korang, (how clever you are)," he chided.
