“Maybe The Star wants to sensationalise the issue. It appears to be mischievous,” he said in a press conference at Komtar today.
The report by Star Metro yesterday had quoted a Perak exco man who pointed to a recent study showing that many people were travelling to Penang for work but staying in northern Perak.
The exco man said this after briefing a recent business delegation from the Malaysian Chamber of Commerce (Hong Kong and Macau).
Lim said he did not want to blame the exco man or the Perak government, but felt the issue had been editorialised and spun by The Star.
“The headline is also not correct. We have the highest number of people entering Penang. Well, I know The Star likes to run down Penang.
“So, to debunk their claims, we have facts proving otherwise,” he said.
The daily had carried the report with the headline “Many Penangites opting to live in Perak”. But Lim said this was not true as more people had migrated to Penang over the past two years, the highest such rate in the country.
According to the Statistics Department’s Migration Survey Report, Malaysia 2016, Penang registered the highest positive effectiveness ratio of migration in the country at 58.4%
This means that for every 100 visitors entering Penang, 58 of them would eventually end up settling in the state.
Perlis followed at 48.6%, meaning that for every 100 visitors entering the state, 49 of them would eventually settle down there.
Kuala Lumpur recorded the highest negative migration effectiveness ratio of 93.4%. This means that KL’s population dropped, with 93 people leaving for every 100 inter-state migrants going in and out of the state.
Lim also denied claims in the report that many factories were moving to Perak. He said based on government statistics, Penang’s manufacturing sector was three times bigger in value than that of Perak.
According to the Malaysian Investment Development Authority, Penang recorded a total of RM59 billion in projects from 2008 to 2016, while Perak received only RM22 billion in the same period.