The news on Tourism Tax Bill to benefit Sabah is not fake news?

The news on Tourism Tax Bill to benefit Sabah is not fake news?

 The Sabah Association of Tour and Travel Agents (Satta) on 3^rd May, 2017 welcomed Tourism and Culture Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Nazri Abdul Aziz’s announcement that the 70 per cent of the revenue collected from tourism tax which will come into force on July 1 this year is to be divided equally between Sabah, Sarawak and Peninsular Malaysia.

Nazri has announced that 30 per cent of the tourism tax revenue would be spent on upgrading tourism infrastructure, while the 70 per cent would be divided into three equal parts and allocated to Sabah, Sarawak and Peninsular Malaysia respectively.  Sabah’s portion would be 23.33 per cent of the tourism tax.

Liaw of SATTA said Sabah has 29,720 hotel rooms, which constituted less than nine per cent of the 304,000 registered hotel rooms nationwide.

When winding up the debate for the Tourism Tax Bill on 6^th April 2017, Mohamed Nazri said revenue from Tourism Tax would be in the region of RM654.62 million if the overall occupancy rate for the 11 million "room night" in the country can achieve 60 per cent.

The Tourism Tax Bill 2017 which was recently passed in Parliament will exclude accommodations such as homestays, kampung stays and pusat latihan asrama (boarding schools), said Deputy Tourism and Culture Minister Datuk Mas Ermieyati Samsudin.

On tourism, Mas Ermieyati said they expected some 32.2 million visitors to Malaysia this year.

Tourist receipts rose by 18.8%, contributing RM82.1 billion to the country's revenue in 2016 against RM69.1 billion in 2015

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State Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Seri Masidi Manjun said Sabah received an all-time high of 3.43 million tourist arrivals and RM7.25 billion tourism receipts in 2016  

What Nazri said about the purpose of the Tourism Tax is too good to be real as a certain portion of the tax collected would be channelled to Sabah for improvement in the much lacking tourism infrastructure.

I have yet to sight the Tourism Tax Bill 2017 as it progresses to the Dewan Negara.

Isn’t it all national revenue by whatever name is channelled to the national coffer and part and parcel of the operations and allocations of the national fiscal budget annually by the Finance Minister rather than that any other minister has the power to do allocation of the tax in the fashion mentioned in the press statement?

How much such tax is collected is very dependent on foreign tourists coming to Malaysia. Has the Minister considered that many hotel rooms are occupied by local visitors and not as tourists hence such rooms so occupied would not be levied any such tax?  So this can present problem to the hotels to identify tourists from local occupants or visitors. By the same argument, how accurate would be the amount of tax to be collected based on the occupancy rate alone?

It is equally in doubt how would the money/tax allocated to Sabah to be disbursed to the tourism sector. When and  who would be charged with the management of such fund of say 23.3% portion to Sabah?  If profligacy and mismanagement occurs, then the purpose of the Tourism Tax is defeated.  The new tax can be an issue to the tourists affecting the arrivals.

Of course Sabah would need a lot more fund from various revenues so derived from Sabah like the 40% thereof to be returned to Sabah for decades in accordance to Malaysia Agreement 1963.

With the introduction of GST at 6%, Sabah did not get anything like 40% of GST so collected on trade activities in Sabah by resident and non resident (KL based) companies. On the other hand Sabah retains its sales tax of 7% on palm oil and 15% on gambling tickets when such taxes should have been abolished with GST.

I hope Prime Minister cum Finance Minister would confirm that the news as reported is not fake news as the PM warned people not to be deceived by fake news in his key note address at the 19^th Asia Oil and Gas Conference in KL on 8^th May, 2017.  

      Joshua Y. C. Kong 10 May, 2017

Call RCI on oil and gas

Call RCI on oil and gas

Recently in a news item titled “Correcting oil royalty perception” Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi advised those who accused the Federal Government of acting tyrannically with regard to oil royalty distribution "to go back to kindergarten".

What is he trying to hide as he was not prepared to explain or himself as ignorant as an UMNO top leader trying to bluff his way out?

He exposed himself so much like a naked baby still in the baby crib as he is wrapped in nothing.

He is also resemblance of someone who is just too ridiculous and insulting or simply a fool even as a Home Affairs Minister.

Since he forced us “to go back to kindergarten”, may I ask how he had accumulated so many companies (likely a hundred) as a politician if that is not corruption or abuse of power? He had remained silent over this allegation.  Are any of such companies related to oil and gas business?

For public information, I had lodged at least three police reports on oil relating to PDA Act 144 and Petronas.  They are .Petronas & Sabah  KK/rpt/27530/04 21 Dec 2004 and Police Report on Petroleum Development Act and Petroleum Nasional Bhd (Petronas), PM; National Petroleum Advisory Council 11th July 2008 Luyang/002072/08 and a reminder dated 3 February 2009 in another Police Report on the two earlier items.

Briefly the issues raised in these Police Reports are PDA Act 144 is deemed to be ultra vires the Federal Constitution according to article 3 (3) of the Act by design. There are other violations which actually disqualified the Prime Minister as a personal capacity to be holding the premiership while as a 'director' of Petronas under Act 144 while interpreting the Companies Act 1965 in the context of position of control. It is appropriate that all ultra vires scenarios are breaches of authority and unsustainable in the context of public accountability, illegalities, transparency, abuses of power, corruption, cronyism, parliamentary mockery, public scandal, disorders, injustice, immoral and public dysfunction.

I had called for a Royal Commission of Inquiry must be established to assess the situation since 1974 and justice be restored accordingly for national peace and harmony.

So our DPM should advise our PM to advise the King to initiate a Royal commission of Inquiry on oil and gas as soon as possible to expose all the shortcomings working against the public at large.

Joshua Y C Kong 4 May, 2017

Nothing came of BYOB police report

Nothing came of BYOB police report

Published on: Sunday, April 30, 2017

By Joshua Y C Kong
SABAH Environment Protection Association (SEPA) forged a smart partnership with the government through the State Tourism, Culture and Environment Ministry to form EAC in 1997 with the aim of initiating a joint responsibility between the government and the people to carry out environmental activities that can contribute towards enhancing environmental quality.

Unfortunately this smart partnership had run aground when a police report was made by sepa in April, 2015, after the due process of settlement of an accounting function of EAC failed and the police report appears to have not been pursued after two years.

I had been the founder member of Sepa since 1984 together with Mayor Datuk Yeo and an EAC member since 1997 with much concern in environment.

This ongoing “crisis” on Bring Your Own Bags (BYOB) is indeed a black mark for environment activities for a few years since BYOB was implemented.

The joint project of Sepa with the Ministry in BYOB was reported to have collected a lot of money, probably RM1 million.

The crux of the “crisis” was that the accounts of the BYOB project had not been audited for years.

There is an allegation that the said money had not been properly accounted for while there was a shakeup in the management team of BYOB.

Just in passing, I wonder why a report on page 2 of Daily Express on 17 April, 2017 headed “Hidden Accounts: NGO under probe” after a police report was lodged with the name of the NGO not disclosed.

Joshua Y C Kong

Sabah's 400 islands need urgent attention over security

Sabah’s 400 islands need urgent attention over security

The Defence Minister Hishammuddin was speaking after launching the Eastern and Western Fleet base in conjunction with the Royal Malaysian Navy's 83rd anniversary held at the Sepanggar Naval Base here, on Thursday 27^th April, 2017.

Also present was Navy Chief Admiral Tan Sri Tan Sri Ahmad Kamarulzaman Ahmad Badaruddin, among others.

"The list of assets we have set in Sabah, what our plans are for the security of Sabah, all this has nothing to do with politics. We consider Sabah as part of Malaysia and we will defend every inch of Sabah by any power available to us," said Hishammuddin, who is also Special Functions Minister.

The Navy chief Admiral Ahmad said "We will improve in terms of capabilities, manpower and also assets, but it will be implemented in stages."  "We can see, the existing vessels we have anchored in front of us, which also directly ensure that we provide the best response to ensure the safety of Sabah and Sarawak's waters.

"However, the responsibility should be shared by everyone, people can play a role by being our eyes and ears so that information can be delivered quickly and accurately," Ahmad said.

I think every Malaysian especially Malaysians/Sabahans in Sabah are very concerned about the security in Sabah not only in Esszone but the whole of Sabah especially what we learned from those threatening demographic development in Sabah for decades in the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Illegal Immigrants Sabah (RCI IIS).

It is known Sabah has 400 islands around our coast of various sizes with the bigger ones of up to 600 acres.   The transient residents of these islands and many hundreds of thousands of “Trojan horses” within mainland Sabah could really pose grave security hazards to the State for sometimes already.  Some of these islands could be transit points for the criminals including fishing intruders from the neighbouring countries.

The level of threats from the transient residents in those island is unknown at the moment.  But search for some information in websites produced a disturbing important message. Mengalum Island was in the news spotlight recently this year for a sunken Catamaran with 28 Chinese tourists and 3 crews.  A search for that island came out with a message that Mengalum Island is not a tourist resort.  Also the message dated 8 November, 2014 ** left by a foreign tourist exposed that “We were not allowed to swim in the ocean due to sting rays and there was not a designated swim area. We were told it could be dangerous to wander too far down the beach and not to go out of sight of staff due to the Philippine fishermen living on the other side of the island.”

It is better to be cautious rather than complacent, and so I urge the navy and MMEA to ensure if all our islands are safe without dubious people occupying such islands?  Also some quarters have told me the outlying islands in the west coast of Sabah are occupied by “outsiders”.  Isn’t Gaya Island so near to KK city also occupied by dubious citizens as squatters houses may have “mushroomed” again? 

Would the prevailing naval assets be adequate to deal with 400 islands in Sabah?

Joshua Y. C Kong, 1 May, 2017     

**https://www.tripadvisor.com.my/ShowUserReviews-g298307-d798285-r238706465-Mengalum_Tours_Dive_Resort-Kota_Kinabalu_Kota_Kinabalu_District_West_Coast_Divisi.html#