KUALA LUMPUR (Jan 6): Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng today rubbished Sarawak leaders' accusation that the federal government had distributed proceeds of tourism tax collected to the state of Sabah, and not to Sarawak.

In a statement, Lim said the federal government has yet to distribute the tourism tax proceeds to any states. He also said that by law, tourism tax collected are the revenue of the federal government, and that the states actually have no right to the collection.

"However, even though the previous federal government never made the effort to share and distribute the tourism tax revenue with the states, the Pakatan Harapan government announced in Budget 2019 that 50% of the collected tourism tax revenue will be shared with the respective state beginning year 2019. This reflects the new federal government's respect towards the states," Lim explained.

In his October budget speech, Lim had said Putrajaya would share the 50% tourism tax proceeds, estimated at RM50 million at the time, with the states to assist the respective state governments in encouraging tourism activities.

In his statement today, Lim shared that the federal government is now finalising the accounting of tourism tax revenue for the year 2018, after which the 50% distribution would be made to the respective states in the first quarter of 2019.

He went on to tell the Sarawak state government not to make accusations about the distribution of the tourism tax, because as at Nov 30, the state still owes the federal government over RM2.5 billion, with some RM50 million in arrears yet to be repaid.

"Given that the state of Sarawak has such a huge reserve, why does it not settle the debt owed to the federal government?" he asked in return. Sarawak reportedly had about RM31 billion in reserves.

His statement came after Sarawak's Tourism, Arts, Culture, Youth and Sports Minister Datuk Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzar alleged on yesterday (Jan 5) that the federal government owed Sarawak RM2.7 million in tourism tax revenue, from the total RM4.6 million tourism tax collected in the state from September 2017.

Abdul Karim was reported as saying that Sabah had received the tourism tax revenue, which he claimed to have learnt after meeting with Sabah leaders following a visit there.