Govt focuses on driving national financial recovery - Tengku Zafrul

KUALA LUMPUR: The Ministry of Finance (MoF) is focusing on driving the country's financial recovery so that the people can return to normal life comfortably through several strategies such as creating new jobs, bringing in investment and helping businesses.

Minister Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Abdul Aziz said the strategy to drive the country's financial growth was laid out through two main pillars, namely JaminKerja and SemarakNiaga in Budget 2022, after the country was ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic.

"I hope we can continue to give the most important priority to economic recovery for the people. We are on the right track where economic activity, whether from a macro, business or individual perspective, is gradually recovering rapidly based on indicators such as the job market and so on.

"I am confident that we can recover according to plans and generate the economy, hence, continuing to bring confidence to investors to continue to come to Malaysia," he said in his Facebook post today.

Tengku Zafrul was responding to former prime minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin's statement on the country's current financial situation.

On Saturday, Muhyiddin was reported as saying that the country's finances were not as pretty as they had been made out to be, vowing to make further exposures on the matter soon.

Muhyiddin, who is also Perikatan Nasional chairman, also gave clues of how far stretched the country's treasury was after weathering the twin crises of the economy and the pandemic, calling it the "biggest challenge".

Tengku Zafrul said the statement was in reference to a report he had submitted to Muhyiddin.

"It was a report given to the Secretariat of the National Recovery Council (MPN), just like other reports given by my cabinet colleagues regardless of any party.

"As MPN chairman, he needs the reports to make the right decision in helping the Prime Minister lead Malaysia towards post-COVID19 recovery," he said.

Tengku Zafrul asserted that the economic facts in the report were facts that had been mentioned repeatedly to the Cabinet and the public.

"I never hide, either through my media statements, comments in forums, parliamentary answers and reports from agencies such as Bank Negara Malaysia, the Statistics Department and so on.

"That's why since last year, we have been talking about the Fiscal Responsibility Act, to prevent issues such as 1MDB, Suria Strategic Energy Resources Sdn Bhd and others from happening again," he added.

-- BERNAMA