The Penang BN Youth, who recently claimed that the state would be bankrupt due to annual deficit budgets, has been slammed for "misleading the public and treating Penangites as if they are dumb".

Policy research centre Penang Institute senior executive officer Steven Sim said that the state's BN Youth vice-chairperson Tan Hing Teik who made the claim is "ignorant" about the issue on four counts.

"Firstly, the Penang BN Youth is obviously ignorant of economics," Sim told Malaysiakini.

"In the recent global economic crisis, the argument that there should be budget cuts to boost growth has been discredited," said Sim, who was selected as a ‘Young Global Leader' by the prestigious World Economic Forum in March last year.

"Budget cuts may lead to a sharp fall in demand, especially when even household spending has already been dampened," he added.

"Instead of merely prescribing austerity, even conservatives are proposing responsible spending; in other words, it is not merely about deficit or surplus, but good and clean governance," said Sim, who is also Seberang Perai (MPSP) municipal councillor.

Focus on economy, Guan Eng told

In a press conference last week, Tan said the Penang government has been "wasting the people's money and has not been effective".

He urged Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng to focus on the state economy and control the increasing deficit , adding that Penang, under the BN government, never had a deficit this high.

Sim said Tan obviously cannot differentiate between the projected and actual budget because since 2008, despite projecting deficits, the Pakatan Rakyat government has managed to achieve actual budget surpluses every year in Penang.

They are RM88 million in 2008, RM77.34 (2009), RM33.54 (2010) and RM138.32 (2011), said Sim, adding that the last figure is the "biggest surplus" in the history of Penang.

Thirdly, Sim said state the BN Youth is "obviously ignorant, or conveniently chose to ignore the failures of their party" when running the state, prior to 2008.

"It was at that time, that Penang really suffered from actual budget deficits," said Sim, who is also the publicity secretary of the state's DAP Socialist Youth party.

"Under BN, MPSP suffered the humiliation of being labelled a bankrupt local council with an eight-years-straight deficit totalling RM230 million," he claimed.

"Fourthly and finally, the Penang BN Youth is obviously ignorant of the many problems in Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak's federal government," he added.

"Not only has the federal government under BN been running decade-long deficit budgets, it is plagued with chronic problems of corruption, cronyism and nepotism," he stressed.

Sim said that while he does not expect the Penang BN Youth to be well-versed in the economy, it is expected that they have the basic ethics at least, so as not to mislead the people.

He urged the BN to spend more time assisting Najib's "weak and lacklustre" federal government to prevent the warning of Minister in the Prime Minister's Department's Idris Jala about Malaysia becoming bankrupt by 2019 from coming true.