“These were reports given to the secretariat of the NRC, just like other reports given by my Cabinet colleagues, regardless of which party they are from,” he said in his Facebook post today.
“As NRC chairman, Muhyiddin needs the reports to make the right decision in helping the prime minister lead Malaysia towards post-Covid19 recovery,” he said.
Tengku Zafrul was responding to an earlier report which said an Umno division had lodged a police report against Muhyiddin, alleging that he may have broken the law when he claimed the country was in financial trouble.
The youth wing of the Parit Sulong Umno division said information about the nation’s financial status was protected under the Official Secrets Act 1972.
“The Bersatu president is not a Cabinet member or the prime minister any more. He is not entitled to be in possession of any information on the country that is classified as confidential,” the division told police.
Muhyiddin was reported as saying yesterday that the country’s finances were not as rosy as they had been made out to be, vowing to make further exposures on the matter soon.
The Perikatan Nasional chairman also gave clues on how overly-stretched the country’s treasury was after weathering the twin crises of the economy and the pandemic, calling them the “biggest challenges”.
Tengku Zafrul asserted today that the economic information in the reports had been previously disclosed to the Cabinet and the public.
“These have been made public, 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 problems such as the 1MDB, Suria Strategic Energy Resources Sdn Bhd and others from happening again.”
Tengku Zafrul also said that the finance ministry was focused on driving the country’s financial recovery so that the people could return to their normal lives, through strategies such as creating new jobs, attracting investments and helping businesses.
He said the strategy to drive the country’s financial growth was laid out through two main pillars, JaminKerja and SemarakNiaga in Budget 2022 after the country was ravaged by the Covid-19 pandemic.
“I hope we can continue to give utmost priority to economic recovery to help the people.
“We are on the right track as economic activity at the macro, business or individual levels is recovering, based on indicators such as the job market and so on.
“I am confident that we can recover based on our plans and continue to draw investors to Malaysia,” he said.