National debts: more puzzling numbers tumblin’

ARCHIVES 2011

By admin-s On Jun 27, 2011

By Lee Wee Tak

Recently there is a claim in this video, MalaysiaYouth4Change that according to a report on 13th Jan 2011 by Thompson Reuters Eikon, the bonds sold by Malaysia national debt is USD179 billion which’ at optimistic exchange rate of RM3 to USD1, is a whopping RM537 billion, very much higher than RM271 billion as at June 2010 as reported the finance ministry.

I have no idea how TRE derived the number and baffled by the huge gap between this number and the finance ministry figures, on which the Prime Minister had cheerfully advised Malaysians that national debts have decreased.

Then some curious person sent me the breakdown of TRE numbers hoping I could clarify the situation. I am amused by this because I am certainly not part of the federal finance ministry administration but I can just take a cursory look at the data and hope to point out a thing or 2.

Picture 1 shows the finance ministry number as at 30 June 2010

Picture 2 shows the Thompson Reuters Eikon numbers, very much higher

Picture 3 shows some more detailed information

Luckily there is an excel file which makes analysing easierBase on a cursory review of the 2 sets of data, the discrepancies could be explained by

1) Finance Ministry only included bonds issued to Malaysia where as TRE included bonds issued to proxies such as Petronas, Khazanah, MISC etc

2) that still leaves a sizable difference between the TRE and finance ministry numbers – it could be different exchange rates applied and also classification differences between these 2. Statistic collection can be a dodgy business.

In any case, the Malaysian government should seek to clarify this with TRE urgently because its figure is giving a different impression from what the finance ministry is giving, hence confusing the business communities, foreign and local, as well as all tax payers.