PUTRAJAYA, June 6 — Putrajaya has yet to decide if Malaysians should pay a consumption tax on the RON95 petrol and diesel when it rolls out the Goods and Services Tax (GST) next April, Datuk Ahmad Maslan said today.

The deputy finance minister indicated the decision on GST for fuel is tied closely to the government’s future cuts on fuel subsidies and final list of goods that will be included under the GST scheme.

“We wait for Cabinet’s decision, I cannot announce anything about subsidy rationalisation. I cannot announce whether GST will be imposed on fuel or not because the decision has not been made yet,” he told reporters today after giving a briefing on GST to entrepreneurs here.

Ahmad said that there was no “final decision” yet on whether the government would impose GST on an additional 255 items.

On May 6, Ahmad told Parliament that GST will be imposed on 689 goods — with the price of 73 of these items to go up, while the price of 287 items will go down and 329 items will have the same price after the tax.

During the briefing today, Ahmad said any decisions on GST for fuel would be announced together with any subsidy rationalisation measures by the government.

Recent news reports said that those earning less than RM5,000 each month would be entitled to continue buying fuel at the subsidised rate, while those earning between RM5,000 and RM10,000 would be allowed a monthly quota of subsidised fuel and would have to pay market price once they exceed the quota.

Those who earn RM10,000 each month would have to pay the full price for the fuel they buy, the reports said.

Ahmad maintained today that such reports were baseless, which he said had previously been dismissed as speculation by Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Consumerism Ministry’s secretary-general Datuk Seri Alias Ahmad.

Ahmad said the government still needed to trim fuel subsidies, which costs the government RM22.3 billion out of an annual RM40 billion bill for various subsidised goods including rice and flour.

He said that 70 per cent of the current fuel subsidies now benefit those with higher income, saying there was a need to implement a more targeted subsidy system to benefit those with lower income.