THE goods and services tax (GST) may be brought back sometime later, said Economy Minister Mohd Rafizi Ramli.  

The Malaysian Reserve reported him as saying it was necessary to ensure good governance before implementation of the consumption tax.  

“If you don’t fix your governance, you don’t fix your spending and your effectiveness or efficiency of your budgeting; it’s very easy when you have GST…you just keep raising from initially 5%, then 7% and eventually it will be 20%,” he said at a forum today.  

“My view about GST is when the time comes, it’s something that we have to look at, but before that, we have enough avenues within the 12 to 15-month horizon to fix things.”  

Earlier on, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim had said the unity government wasn’t ready to implement a broad-based consumption tax such as the GST.  

“In a situation where most people are still struggling, food inflation is over 5%, wage rates are still low, it turns out that now is not the right time and place to introduce and implement it,” the prime minister had said.   

He added that a luxury goods tax on branded items could be introduced this year as an alternative to the GST.  

The Pakatan Harapan government had scrapped the GST when it won the 2018 general election and replaced it with the sales and service tax on September 1, 2018. – February 28, 2023.