PARLIAMENT The federal government debt as of Sept 30 this year was at RM623.3 billion, said Deputy Finance Minister Johari Abdul Ghani.

“Of this amount, 96.4 percent or RM601.1 billion was domestic debt, with the balance of RM22.2 billion or 3.6 percent being offshore loans in various denominations of currency.

“The government debt is manageable and categorised as a country with moderate indebtedness,” he told the Dewan Rakyat today.

He said this in response to a question from Ahmad Hamzah (BN-Jasin) who asked for clarification from the finance minister on the federal government debt.

Johari said the level of the federal government debt for the stated period to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was 53.7 percent.

On the government guaranteed debts, he said the figure was at RM175.8 billion as of June 2015, and given out to 27 institutions, including government-owned companies.

“The reason for providing the guarantee is to enable the institutions concerned to obtain a lower financing cost to undertake long-term strategic development projects which benefit the people as a whole,” he added.

He said the federal government was also hosting debt of RM30 billion as of June 2015 for the purpose of implementing programmes under the Private Financing Initiative (PFI) model.

According to Johari, the commitment under this debt had already been computed in the annual budget allocation for the purpose of financing loan repayments.

“The commitment (PFI debt) has also been taken into account in computing the fiscal deficit and the status of the federal government debt, and will not increase the existing deficit target,” he added.

- Bernama