KUALA LUMPUR, June 15 — The Finance Ministry through the Royal Malaysian Customs Department is committed to ensuring that the Goods and Services Tax (GST) refund to taxpayers will be expedited, and payment to be made beginning June 22.

Minister Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Abdul Aziz said the payment process would be completed by December this year.

"The Finance Ministry has agreed for the Customs Department to employ the ‘pay first and audit later’ approach for selected companies based on the Goods and Services Tax (Repeal) Act 2018 and also certain criteria.

"In this regard, I have instructed the department to expedite the refund process that had been deferred due to the movement control order (MCO) and conditional MCO during which the field audits could not be done,” he said in a statement today.

Tengku Zafrul said the decision would hopefully ease the cash flow of the various business sectors during the challenging economic recovery period.

"This effort is in line with the economic recovery steps introduced under the National Economic Recovery Plan (Penjana) unveiled by Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin on June 5, 2020,” he said. — Bernama