THE Communications and Multimedia Ministry today said there are no plans to impose a 20 sen surcharge for online purchases, following remarks by Zahidi Zainul Abidin yesterday of doing so as a means to generate revenue.

In a brief statement today, the ministry said the proposal has not been discussed.

“Referring to the statement made on September 8 in Kelantan, the ministry wishes to clarify that we have yet to discuss imposing a service charge on e-commerce platform users amounting to 20 sen for purchases below RM1,000, and an additional 20 sen for every subsequent RM1,000.”

The deputy minister reportedly said Putrajaya was considering charging a rate of .02% of the value of the transaction.

“For example, a transaction amounting to RM 1,000 will be charged 20 sen or 0.02%. This way we can use spend the money generated on cyber security,” he was quoted as saying by news portal Malaysiakini.

Zahidi yesterday said the matter was still being discussed, and was one way to generate revenue for the government without burdening the people.

He said the money from the service charge will be used to improve security systems against scammers and cyber-attacks.

Politicians from both sides of the divide have since slammed the proposal.

Federal Territories Minister Annuar Musa vowed to oppose it if it is ever tabled in the cabinet, and former finance minister Lim Guan Eng questioned if the Perikatan Nasional government was out of money to resort to such measures. – September 9, 2020.