The government needs to seriously consider the prospects of imposing the proposed Goods and Services Tax (GST) as the country can ill-afford to continue relying on oil and gas revenue forever.

Dr Chua Soi Lek, MCA’s government affairs and policy monitoring bureau chief, said it was time the government took appropriate measures to enforce the GST efficiently as there were still shortcomings to implement the tax effectively.

oil world market 141008 04 “Although the 2010 Budget is generally considered to be a good and painless budget to the people, the government needs to do more with regard to GST as its implementation is still not up to the mark.

“Currently, oil and gas contribute 40 percent of government revenue and in the next five to 10 years, income from oil and gas will continue to drop.

“Hence, the government will have to find new sources of revenue and one of them is GST," said the former health minister to reporters at MCA-hosted 2010 Budget briefing.

“It's up to the government to educate the people on GST so that there will be no political fallout or people getting angry with the government without understanding what GST is all about," said the former MCA deputy president.

GST will increase gov't coffers

Chua said the government should not delay on GST implementation as next year's revenue is expected to dwindle and will continue to decline unless oil and gas prices are high.

supermarket goods dairy products 070904 Hence, the GST is very important to government coffers.

GST is a tax all Malaysians will need to pay the government everytime they buy a product or use a service.

Lauding the maiden budget of Prime Minister Najib Razak that focused primarily on the people's well-being, he said there was no new increases in taxes.

“This is very commendable. Not only there is no new hikes in taxes, there is one per cent reduction in personal income tax from 27 percent to 26 percent for individuals earning above RM100,000 a year. This is highly commendable," he said.

- Bernama