Sarawak minister Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah says the state accepts the implementation of the tourism tax but wants its share of the tax collected to be channelled straight to the state government.
According to The Borneo Post, the tourism, arts, culture, youth and sports minister said Chief Minister Abang Johari Openg had communicated this stand to the federal government in a recent meeting with Prime Minister Najib Razak.
“The prime minister has assured that funds from the tourism tax collection will be distributed between the peninsula, Sabah and Sarawak,” Karim said.
In the report, he said the state government had no choice but to accept the implementation of the tourism tax as it had been passed in Parliament.
He said as long as the tax collection was not for other purposes such as paying off debts, it was a good thing.
“We want our share from the tourism tax collection to go straight to the state government and not be channelled through other agencies or any other means,” he added.
This would be a win-win formula as the tax collected would hopefully benefit Sarawak in terms of promoting tourism, he told a press conference today.
However, he was personally sceptical on whether the tax imposition would take effect on July 1 as announced by Tourism and Culture Minister Nazri Aziz, since the implementation might need further refinement.
“There is one more week left before the month of July begins,” he said, adding that it might not be practical to implement the tax collection in July as there was not much time left.
No comments:
Post a Comment