Liang claimed that Guan Eng had merely shifted the debts elsewhere by taking out effects of state lands and via accounting tricks. Due to that, Liang claimed that the state government would have been in increasingly severe budget deficit every year since 2010. Due to this figure, Liang claimed that the colossal growth could only mean that the Penang state government had been selling more state land since 2008. On the water woes, Liang said that SPAN and Putrajaya had taken over the existing RM655 million state debt and converted it to a yearly lease of RM14.56 million. He explained that the Penang state government has to pay the amount to the Federal government for 45 years, which comes back to the same amount.

Source: New Strait Times January 09, 2017 06:19 UTC