Bond issuance carefully planned - deputy minister

PARLIAMENT | The Finance Ministry gives assurance that its bond issuance throughout the year has been carefully planned, and the ministry is also redeeming bonds at the same time.

This comes after Hassan Karim (Pakatan Harapan-Pasir Gudang) questioned Deputy Finance Minister Amiruddin Hamzah about a report saying the government had issued RM81.3 billion in bonds for the first half of 2019.

"Is this statistic true? I am worried that Malaysia will become like Greece.

"I ask, it is about time, we cannot blame the country's debts on the previous government anymore. What is past is past.

"Since we dare to topple the BN government, the Harapan government must be brave enough to take on the responsibility of these assets and liabilities. The question is how to save our country?" Hassan asked during the question-and-answer session in the Dewan Rakyat today.

Amiruddin said that there are those who are trying to make it seem like the government owes more than what was announced as the deficit in Budget 2019.

However, he assured that this is not the case as the government has been redeeming bonds as they issue new ones.

"For any debts we take on in any year, we have planned it from the beginning. At the same time, we are also redeeming old debts.

"To assure Pasir Gudang, this is all done based on careful planning throughout the year, and this is the same thing we approved at the end of 2018 in Budget 2019. So, there is nothing to say that we have more debt than what we said," he said.

Amiruddin said that in between January and August this year, the government had issued RM102.2 billion in bonds, but in the same period, they have redeemed RM38.8 billion bonds, making it a net bond issuance of RM63.4 billion.

"People say, 'eh this is still a bigger amount than what you stated in your budget'.

"(But) for September to December, we will issue more bonds totalling RM33.5 billion and at the same time, we will redeem RM44.5 billion," he explained.

This means Putrajaya will redeem RM11 billion more than what they issue in bonds for that period, Amiruddin said.

Taking this into account, the net total bonds issued in 2019 would be RM52.4 billion, which is what was announced in Budget 2019, Amiruddin said.

Redeeming a bond describes the repayment of any money market fixed-income security at or before the asset's maturity date.

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