KUALA LUMPUR: The government should stop or minimise its campaigns to “find faults” and instead focus on efforts to restore the confidence of the people and investors, Umno said today.
Its Strategic Communications Unit said the "hasty and drastic" move by the Pakatan Harapan government to expose mistakes of the past administration and announcement of the RM1 trillion national debt negatively impacted the economy.
It said this was proven with the plunging of the FBM KLCI to its lowest rate in the recent years despite standing at 1,600 points. Before the 14th General Election, the bourse recorded a healthy rate of 1,800 points.
“Foreign investors pulled out RM11 billion from the stock market and the fall in market capitalisation of all the stocks is approximately more than RM200 billion.
“The significant drop critically impacted public funds such as Employees Provident Fund, Tabung Haji, Amanah Saham Nasional and Amanah Saham Bumiputera.
“The fears of the investment community on the current administration scenario also affected the ringgit that depreciated RM4 and above against the greenback. Prior to the elections it was below RM4 against the US dollar,”
“If the current situation is not addressed immediately and effectively, Umno fears that it will affect the economy more seriously while adding to the burdens of Malaysians while going about their daily lives,”
The communication unit also reminded the federal government that it has yet to fulfil many of its election promises, except for the zero-rated Goods and Services Tax.
“They are currently putting in much efforts to expose the wrongdoings of the previous government and this includes zooming in on the 1Malaysia Development Bhd issue and changing heads of government departments, agencies and government-linked companies that allegedly supported the former administration,”
Among the unrealised pledges made by the pact were; increasing the minimum wage, introducing EPF deductions for homemakers form the husbands’ accounts, writing off Felda settlers’ loans and introducing targeted fuel subsidies.
“Pledges like the zero rating of GST also did not bring about the impact that they preached in terms of cost of living. This is because there has been no significant reduction in the prices of goods.
“If PH wants to reduce the cost of living, they should abolish tolls and reduce the price of petrol as it affects most Malaysians,”
Recently, Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng had said that the government has decided to postpone at least five of the initiatives contained in its ‘10 promises in 100 days’ election manifesto, until the recovery of the country’s financial situation.
