KUCHING, June 6 — Parti Bumi Kenyalang (PBK) secretary-general Priscilla Lau today said the RM35 billion National Economic Recovery Plan (Penjana), announced by Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin yesterday, looks generally good but has fallen short in areas that matter.
She cited the waiver and partial waiver of sales tax for locally assembled cars and imported cars respectively is a good start but it is only reliving a small percentage of the real burden for car buyers.
She said the government should also do away with the exorbitant excise duty of between 75 to 105 per cent on cars.
“There is also an import duty of 10 to 30 per cent which is payable together with the sale services tax (SST),” Lau said in a statement.
She stressed that the transport infrastructure in Sarawak makes it essential for each family to at least have a car in order to go to work.
“Therefore waving fully or partially the sales tax on cars will not make much of a difference to the whole economy,” Lau said.
She said to assist the whole of Malaysia to be more economically sound the government should indefinitely zerorise all SST effective immediately, stressing that this will leave a bigger spending power for Malaysians.
She urged the government to seriously look into and revise the tax rate for this period of recovery so that income those with an income of less than RM10,000 per month shall be exempted from taxes for the Years 2019 and 2020.
On the re-introduction of Home Ownership Campaign to assist people to be homeowners, Lau said it should cover all sale and purchase of homes regardless of whether or not it is from a developer.
She said the developers should not be compelled to give a discount of 10 per cent before qualifying for the incentive as they are also facing the same hardship as the rest of the economy and are an essential part of the recovery process of our housing industry.
“Therefore greater steps should be made to assist them especially as so many have already constructed houses on their projects before the movement control order (MCO) and those houses have been sitting there incurring losses through borrowing interest rates and continual payment of salaries and so on,” she said.
She said there should also be no minimum purchase price because prospective owners of cheaper homes should be encouraged, not excluded, from the stamp duty exemption for the purchase of homes costing between RM300,000 and RM2.5 million from June 1, 2020 to May 31, 2021.
