The ministry said the unity government remains committed to ensuring the successful execution of the Felda recovery plan, which includes waiving the settlers’ debts as previously announced.

“With that, the government has approved up to RM9.9 billion funds for Felda to issue sukuk,” it said in a statement today.

On Friday, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said the government will continue to issue up to RM1 billion in sukuk to Felda annually for the next 10 years to “safeguard its survival”, an initiative introduced by the Muhyiddin Yassin administration in 2021.

However, Anwar said Muhyiddin’s administration never implemented the move despite making the announcement.

In July 2021, then prime minister Muhyiddin announced that his administration had agreed to waive the loans of Felda settlers amounting to RM8.3 billion, subject to certain conditions.

Anwar insisted that there were no allocations under the 2021 and 2022 budgets to waive the loans, and that he had “personally signed off” such a programme.

Yesterday, in a Facebook post, Muhyiddin said the initiative was carried out during his tenure as prime minister, which was confirmed by the minister in the Prime Minister’s Department in a parliamentary response on Feb 23.

“However, due to Felda’s cash flow constraints, the PH-BN government was unable to continuously implement the resolution of settlers’ debt,” he said.