Friday 29 Mar 2024
By
main news image

KUALA LUMPUR (Nov 2): The federal government’s overall debt and liabilities fell to RM1.07 trillion or 74.5% as a percentage of national gross domestic product (GDP) at June 30, 2018, from RM1.09 trillion or 80.3% GDP at Dec 31, 2017 on the back of GDP growth assumption.

In real numbers, the government’s debt and liabilities have reduced by RM21.4 billion during the period helped by a RM75.2 billion reduction in other liabilities, offset by RM38.4 billion increase in federal government debt and a RM15.4 billion increase in committed government guarantees.

According to the Economic Report 2018/2019, “other liabilities” comprise public-private partnerships (PPPs), private finance initiatives (PFIs) and Pembinaan BLT Sdn Bhd — a PPP-concept entity tasked to undertake developments of facilities for the Royal Malaysian Police.

As at June 30, debt and liabilities consist of RM725.2 billion national debt (50.7% GDP), RM184.9 billion in other liabilities (12.9% GDP), RM117.5 billion committed government guarantees (8.2% GDP), RM38.3 billion net debt of 1MDB (2.7% GDP).

The slight reduction from last year, said the report, is due to measures including: review of large infrastructure projects and its cost structure; domestic fund-raising to reduce foreign exchange risk exposure; borrowing “only to fund development projects”; as well as debt restructuring to cut financing costs.

“Under the current economic backdrop, new PPP projects that require annual commitments from the government would not be carried out,” the report said.

On the calculation of debt and liabilities, the government will adopt the International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) and International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Public Sector Debt Statistics by 2021, concurrent with the proposed adoption of accrual accounting practices, added the report. 

      Print
      Text Size
      Share