KUALA LUMPUR, June 18 — The federal government must explain whether it is withholding information on debt-laden Pembinaan PFI Sdn Bhd from the public, following revelations of how the state-owned firm is managed, an opposition MP said today.

Serdang MP Dr Ong Kian Ming said it was shocking that Treasury Secretary-General Tan Sri Dr Irwan Serigar Abdullah admitted to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that Putrajaya gave complete information on PFI to ratings agencies, but kept this from the public.

“In fact, he testified that ‘Everything they know. Our contingent liability – they know more than Malaysian sometimes’,” Ong said in a statement, citing excerpts from the PAC’s report on PFI.

“(What) else do the rating agencies know that Malaysians don’t? Is the treasury revealing information to foreign rating agencies which it is not disclosing in parliament or even to the cabinet as a whole?” the former academic added.

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Ong said he was also left in disbelief over the fact that the Auditor-General’s Department has never audited PFI over nearly a decade, despite being the third largest government-owned company behind Petronas and Khazanah Nasional.

He at the same time questioned Putrajaya’s decision to mark PFI’s expenditure as an “off-budget” item and listing repayments of the firm’s debts as “Other Payments”, stressing that such manoeuvring seems to indicate that Malaysia would end up exceeding the 15 per cent debt repayment to revenue threshold to qualify for top ratings.

“This is very worrying since it was revealed recently that the Ministry of Finance has to make annual payments of between RM4.76 billion to RM11.62 billion from 2015 to 2020 for interest payments of 9 Ministry of Finance owned companies including Pembinaan PFI Sdn Bhd.

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“If these payments are added to the debt servicing figure, then the 15 per cent threshold may be breached!” Ong said.

On Tuesday, the PAC warned that PFI’s off-budget liabilities could hurt Malaysia’s efforts to cut its fiscal deficit.

The bi-partisan panel noted in its report on the government-owned construction company that the country’s official debt would be higher if PFI’s debt was included in the federal deficit accounting.

PAC added that since PFI’s spending is considered “off budget expenditure”, it creates doubt over the figures shown in the annual Budget.

“Because of this, the deficit appears to remain at around 3 per cent of gross domestic products when actually the government’s spending and debt is much higher if we include the loans and spending of PFI,” said the report.

“The spending above means the government will be forced to commit to the financial management (of the debt) in years to come,” it added.

Pembinaan PFI is a government-backed construction firm.

Under the first phase, as much as RM20 billion was allocated to PFI for a total of 547 projects. Over two-thirds of the money was spent for 525 projects so far.

The second phase saw RM10 billion allocated to the firm for 339 projects. Twenty-three per cent of the projects have been completed so far.