KUALA LUMPUR: The government has no plans to halt the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), which is aimed at restructuring the country's tax to a more transparent and efficient system.
Second Finance Minister Datuk Johari Abdul Ghani said the tax system already took into consideration the current socio-economic condition of Malaysians to ensure that its impact on the people was minimal, especially to the lower-income group.
He said Malaysia's GST rate of six per cent was the lowest in Asean, as other countries charged between seven and 12 per cent.
"Even though we charge six per cent, there are many items that are exempted from GST and those that are zero-rated.
"If we take the amount we minus from these items, the effective GST rate for our country is at a mere 3.6 per cent," he said in reply to Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang (Pas-Marang).
For the first nine months of its implementation, Johari said GST collection amounted to RM27.93 billion while for this year, the collection amounted to RM29.34 billion as of Oct 10.