The state government’s think tank Penang Institute has expressed surprise that Gerakan is challenging its economics expert Lim Kim Hwa to answer 10 questions.

Yesterday, Gerakan secretary-general Liang Teck Meng told Kim Hwa to answer 10 queries on Penang’s economic performance under the leadership of Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng.

“As if Lim (Kim Hwa) is a politician,” said Penang Institute (PI) in a statement today.

PI said it had always emphasised that policy must be based on “facts and figures”.

It had become the rationale for the central tenet of the think tank, which was “making ideas work”, said PI.

PI insisted that its calculations were based on the latest available data from the Department of Statistics.

“Our calculations show that in 2006-2007, Penang recorded the lowest percentage growth in GDP per capita.

“However, in 2014-2015, Penang achieved the highest percentage growth in GDP per capita,” PI said.

The state agency said that the economics team at PI was run professionally and comprised competent and qualified economists who were not members of any political party.

However, PI is led by its CEO cum Bukit Bendera MP Zairil Khir Johari.

“The questions requested by Gerakan can be computed by anyone based on the data and information from the Department of Statistics,” PI added.

Today, Liang asked Kim Hwa to answer questions on Penang's gross domestic product (GDP).

DAP and Gerakan have been challenging each other on which party was the better caretaker of the state, with both brandishing data from the Statistic Department to back their claims.

Guan Eng, with the help of Kim Hwa, an economics doctorate from Cambridge University, had rebutted Gerakan’s outdated GDP statistics, and insisted that the state's economic growth performance was better under the current administration.

But Liang, in demanding Kim Hwa to respond his 10 queries, said based on Guan Eng’s data, Penang was the third worst among 15 states and territories for GDP per capita growth between 2008 and 2015.

He pointed out that Penang was also the fourth worst during the period 2009 to 2016, based on the data released by DAP.