He said this showed that they were confident of the Pakatan Rakyat (PH) government’s commitment to restore the country’s fiscal and financial positions.

“Even though they have forecast that the growth will be lower, Malaysia’s rating remains unchanged. This is a very important sign,” he said when winding up the debate on Budget 2019 for his ministry at the Dewan Rakyat today.

He was responding to an interjection from Najib Razak (BN-Pekan) who raised Fitch Solutions Macro Research’s downward revision of Malaysia’s growth forecast to 4.6% for 2018 and 4.2% for 2019.

In another development, Lim said his ministry was still waiting for further details from the Securities Commission (SC) to finalise the framework of the FundMyHome scheme.

“Let’s wait for the details to be finalised and wait for the SC’s announcement to enable transactions and trading to be made for the remaining 80%,” he said.

The scheme allows first-time house buyers to pay 20% of the purchase price, while the balance will be borne by institutional investors through the peer-to-peer financing framework.

The Dewan Rakyat approved the PH government’s maiden budget at the policy level.