PUTRAJAYA: The government is keen to implement the goods and services tax (GST) but has not fixed a timeframe for it, Second Finance Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Husni Mohamad Hanadzlah said yesterday.

He said the government was studying the GST as an effort to further increase future revenue.

“We believe that if we introduce GST, which will take over from the sales and service tax regime, more revenue can be generated but it will not cause much pain to the public,” he told reporters after chairing the focus group meeting on Budget 2010 here.

According to Ahmad Husni, the government also needs to study the social impact arising from implementing the GST.

“This is what we are doing, studying the social impact if we were to introduce the GST,” he said.

Asked whether the government will announce the GST implementation in Budget 2010, Ahmad Husni said: “We don’t have the timeframe when to implement that.”

“If we want to introduce the GST, it should mean the Consumer Price Index would not be affected,” he said, adding that the government did not want to cause hardship for the people.

The Malaysian Institute of Economic Research (MIER) on Monday urged the government to look into tax reforms and introduce them in Budget 2010.

Its executive director Professor Emeritus Datuk Mohammed Ariff Abdul Kareem said the government needed to introduce the GST or Value-Added Tax (VAT) as soon as possible as tax collection this year is expected to fall short of the government’s target.

On the implementation of subsidies, Ahmad Husni said the government was looking into the possibility of giving out more subsidies to vulnerable groups.

“If you earn less, you will get the subsidy but the more you earn, the less you will get. This is the system that we are looking at,” he said.

— Bernama