He urged the federal government not to withdraw the allocations because the state still had much to do to raise the income of the rural community, Malay Mail Online reported.

“What I fear is that because we are a high-income state, they (the federal government) will withdraw certain incentives. I hope they will not withdraw the funds,” he said.

Earlier this month, World Bank economist Apurva Sanghi said Sarawak’s gross national income (GNI) exceeded the high-income threshold of US$13,205 (RM61,500). This was based on the World Bank’s conversion of the data obtained from the statistics department of Malaysia.

“Since we have been categorised as a high-income state, surely there is some impact in terms of subsidies from the federal government,” Abang Johari said.

He stressed, however, that Sarawak was not a party to the World Bank.

He said the focus right now is to improve the economic and social status of the rural community by providing them with basic infrastructure, consequently increasing their household income.

“What we are doing now is we are going to have a policy to distribute that wealth to the people through our various projects under the Post-Covid-19 Development Strategy 2030,” he said.

Meanwhile, Abang Johari also said that he raised the issue of poverty to the federal economic planning unit (EPU) to suggest that the measurement of wealth should be based on assets and not cash.

“We (the state) are (considered) poor because a lot of people are registered under e-kasih. They do not want to get out of e-kasih because they want to continue to receive cash,” he said.