00:00I made the surprise announcement in the last fortnight's budget that due to effective enforcement,
00:11the Anti-Corruption Commission, the police, the tax agencies, we were able to get back
00:2115.5 billion ringgit in two years. Leakages, smuggling funds, racketeers, syndicates.
00:35But my question is, how is it that we could condone and tolerate this rubbish for decades?
00:46And you can follow the debate in Parliament. Hardly any support. I mean, except from the
00:57bad benches, of course, but then from the opposition, it's being ridiculed. I thought it's mind-boggling.
01:05How is it that any government attempt to stop this plundering of national wealth? We can't get this
01:17national consensus to proceed with such conviction and determination.
01:25But let me show you that we will continue. Alhamdulillah, impressive results. Then the basic
01:37question arises. I happen to be Minister of Finance. We have a problem, shortage of funds.
01:44Of course, we get PNB, Khazanah to help out with the Sekolah Madani, Sejati Madani, Fair.
01:49But the option from economics is tax. But I, my question is a conscience. It's a question of
01:58conscience. Why must you tax? Because you need revenue. But what makes you assume that the revenue
02:08that you have collected thus far is well spent and there are no leakages? Now we realize that the
02:15leakages for the last two years have got the 15 billion ringgit. Now why then tax? So, I'm not
02:25suggesting that we will not ever tax. I mean, we will have to. But what I'm suggesting is, what I'm
02:35stressing is, get our house in order. I gave an example. For example, for the last decades,
02:45we have allocated 1.1 billion ringgit annually just to support the price of chicken. Now, supporting the
02:55price of chicken actually is benefiting the cartels. Now, two years back, I said, no, call the players,
03:05the industry players and tell them we will not. Not at their expense. They will not lose. But they
03:13cannot get funds from the government when they already had profits. So, we stopped that two years ago. So,
03:22we saved 1.1 billion ringgit. The way can't this simple policy be implemented? As such, the other is, of course,
03:33the subsidy rationalization. Electricity, we earned between 4 to 6 billion ringgit. Now, recently,
03:42raw 95, all leaders, all governments, all economists say or suggest that you must have the courage to
03:54implement that. Now, we subsidize everybody up to, say, 20, 30 billion a year. Malaysians, foreigners,
04:09they're very rich. So, we introduced around 95. And in order to appease the general public, I reduce the
04:17price for the price for Malaysians. And still, we save between 2.5 to 3 billion ringgit.
04:25Okay. You see, it is in terms of transformation. Okay? Ramana. It's transformative. But don't envy me.
04:41Because it requires courage. It requires this broad consensus in the cabinet. And then, effective
04:54communications. So, I would hope that PNB Hazanah will help us in this. Where the policy is right,
05:02you need also to communicate effectively. Because without good governance, I don't think the other
05:10policies will be able to work.
