The DAP legislator said the national debt was inherited from the previous regime and those companies had an obligation to help in resolving the problem.

They should contribute with proportionately higher donations than low-income people who were giving money to the fund.

“If a common worker provides RM10 towards the fund, the big companies can donate RM1 million,” he told FMT.

The government fund, Tabung Harapan Malaysia, has collected RM7 million in less than 24 hours after it was started.

PKR vice-president Tian Chua agreed that those with greater means should donate more. However, the fund would not fully resolve the country’s debts – which stand at RM681 billion, with commitments to government guarantees of an additional RM199.1 billion.

“It’s just that the Tabung Harapan is a new channel for people to express support for the government to lower the country’s debt,” he told FMT.

He said another way of reducing the country’s debt was to reduce corruption, wastage and leakages of government expenditure.

Santubong MP Wan Juniadi Tuanku Jaafar, a minister in the former BN cabinet, said he was sceptical about the motive in setting up the fund. “It is more of a political stunt rather than to reduce the debt. The BN government had serviced the loans without need of such a fund, or resorting to begging from the people,” he said.

He said Malaysia should not follow the South Korean example of the 1990s Asian financial crisis when citizens donated gold items which the Korean government melted and sold to help settle the national debt.

He said Korea had sovereign debts with the International Monetary Fund, while Malaysia did not have such a problem. He said Malaysia’s debt was still less than 60% of GDP.

The government’s official debt stands at RM686.8 billion, or 50.8% of gross domestic product, while government guarantees amount to RM199.1 billion or 14.6% of the GDP.

“We are comfortably positioned. I don’t see any relevance in setting up the fund other than to seek sympathy and blame the previous government for creating the debt,” he said.

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