SAYING that the “spade” had always been called a spade, Najib Razak insisted that his defeated government had always been transparent about Malaysia’s debt.

The defeated prime minister noted that the debt of RM686.8 billion (50.8% of the gross domestic product) was much lower than the 103.4% reached during the first reign of Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

“The previous government had always complied with international public debt reporting guidelines as defined by the IMF and World Bank. Therefore, the figure of 50.8% is a universally accepted measurement,” Najib wrote in his Facebook account today.

“The contingent obligations, such as guarantees, have never been included in the official measurement of government debt, not even during Dr Mahathir’s previous reign,” he said in a pointed remark at his mentor-turn-nemesis.

The Pekan MP also said the government had given these guarantees to certain entities it owns to help lower their financing cost, adding these are typically long-term obligations backed with revenue-generating assets.

He pointed out the PPP/PFI leases were operating expenses and not debt, and were for much needed social infrastructure, including schools, police stations, hospitals, universities and others.

Najib also insisted that the previous Barisan Nasional government has been transparent and had never hidden these figures revealed by Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng.

He said the figures were published in Treasury reports, BNM reports, accountant-general reports and auditor-general reports annually.

Market analysts, economists and investors are all well aware of these numbers, which are manageable and can be serviced, a fact confidently admitted by the finance minister himself, he added.

“Therefore, we did not hide RM300 billion of debts or falsified figures as alleged. The spade had always been called a spade as per universally accepted guidelines.

“Now that the truth is revealed about this ‘RM1 trillion national debt’, we congratulate the new government for unnecessarily spooking the market, which has led to sharp falls of our stock exchange this week – capping 14 consecutive days of foreign capital outflows,” he said, keeping to his line that the statements were bad for investor sentiments.

He said this debacle has led to real losses to stock market investors and GLICs such as EPF, KWAP, Khazanah and Tabung Haji.

“I hope and pray that PH government ministers will be more careful in making assertions in future,” said the first Umno president to ever lose a general election. – May 25, 2018.