KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 30 — After 200 days, the Pakatan Harapan (PH) government has yet to show how it can manage the economy amid slower growth and challenging global conditions, Datuk Seri Najib Razak said today.

The former prime minister said during his administration in the past nine years, average economic growth hit 5.25 per cent, pointing out that forecasts for this year’s economic growth only touched about 4.5 per cent.

“As a conclusion, I hope that the PH government’s tendency to blame Najib and to blame the Barisan Nasional (BN) government will no longer be their approach,” Najib said on Facebook Live.

“They should be focusing all their attention and energy on how we can save the country’s economy, how we can protect the people’s interest, and how we can face a more challenging economic environment.”

The former Umno president also pointed out that when he became prime minister in 2009, Malaysia’s economy was about RM713 billion, but when he left office this year after PH won the 14th general election, the size of the economy grew to RM1.35 trillion.

“We had forecast rather rapid growth. We had predicted that we could grow our economy into a 2 trillion economy by 2020,” Najib said.

He expressed concern about decreases in all sectors of the country, like tourism, as well as unemployment and the falling ringgit now reaching 4.17 to the US dollar.

Commodity prices for palm oil and rubber have also fallen, while the PH government has decided not to continue or to shrink social safety net schemes set up by the previous BN administration, said Najib.

“In terms of our direction, we have seen too many flip-flops or U-turns and also the rebranding of the BN government’s previous efforts,” said Najib.

He also highlighted the discrepancy between the PH government’s repeated claims that it was RM1 trillion in debt and the government’s mid-term review of the 11th Malaysia Plan that stated government debt was RM686 billion.

Najib has been charged with corruption linked to the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) financial scandal.