The government’s spending on the campaign to promote the Goods and Services Tax (GST) effectively defeats the purpose of the implementation of the new tax system next year, which is to reduce the national deficit, PKR director of strategy Rafizi Ramli said today.

“If the excuse to implement GST is to reduce the deficit, then any expenditure that involves the GST implementation should be closely monitored, apart from other savings,” Rafizi said during a press conference at the PKR headquarters today.

He was referring to the fact that the government had said it would spend at least RM200 million on a GST awareness campaign and also to develop GST software.

Customs director Khazali Ahmad had said that RM100 million will be developed to build a new GST software which will later be sold to businesses, while the Finance Ministry has said RM100 million will be spent for the campaign and training on GST.

“The allocation announced portrays that BN is not sensitive to the people’s suffering in dealing with the cost of living.

“Spending RM200 million just for GST implementation is a huge expenditure in a situation where BN wants to tax the people in order to deal with the deficit,” he said.

“The finance minister should be responsible for this major expenditure which should be reduced in a situation where the people are facing rising costs.”