KUALA LUMPUR, May 25 — The previous government reported the national debt according to international guidelines and never attempted to hide the numbers, Datuk Seri Najib Razak said today, as he blamed the Pakatan Harapan (PH) administration for "unnecessarily” spooking the markets.

In a statement published on his Facebook page, Najib said that contingent liabilities were never included in government debt figures even during Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s previous tenure.

"The previous government had always complied with international public debt reporting guidelines as defined by the IMF and World Bank. Therefore, the figure of 50.8 per cent (debt to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a universally accepted measurement,” Najib said.

Yesterday, Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng said that the current government had decided to call "a spade a spade” in publicly claiming that the liabilities of the government stand at over RM1 trillion, or 80.3 per cent of the GDP.

Lim said that the total amount was an accumulation of off-balance sheet items such as contingent liabilities and lease payments committed by the government under Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects.

"Therefore, we did not hide RM300 billion of debts or falsified figures as alleged. The spade had always been called a spade as per universally accepted guidelines,” Najib said.

He said that market analysts and investors were "well aware” of all the numbers regarding the liabilities of Malaysia’s government previously.

Najib said that the government had "unnecessarily spooked” the markets with public statements about national debt levels.

"Now that the truth is revealed about this "RM1 trillion national debt”, we congratulate the new government for unnecessarily spooking the market which has led to sharp falls of our stock exchange this week — capping 14 consecutive days of foreign capital outflows,” he said.

"This debacle has led to real losses to stock market investors and our GLICs (government linked companies) such as EPF, KWAP, Khazanah and Tabung Haji. I hope and pray that PH government ministers will be more careful in making assertions in future,” he added.