He said the move was agreed to at the last cabinet meeting.

"This will allow the public to give their comments, engage them, and if we find it necessary to finetune it, we'll do so," he told Malaysian journalists covering his working visit to New York on Monday.

Najib, who is also the finance minister, had earlier attended a series of gatherings and meetings with American investors and fund managers as well as top corporate figures.

He said that if the government decided to introduce the GST, it would do so "very gently".

"It's not going to be an abrupt introduction," Najib said, adding that if the GST materialised, the rate would not burden the poor or the middle-class.

" And, it would not lead to inflation," he said.

The proposed GST would replace the current sales and service tax.

Najib said Malaysia was one of the few countries in Southeast Asia that had yet to implement the GST.

" Basically, the whole world has introduced the GST," he said, adding that Malaysia's message of reforms and transformation needs to be told to foreign investors consistently or risk being overshadowed by countries like China and other emerging economies.

He said Malaysia may need to introduce further measures to make its capital market more attractive to foreign fund managers if it does not want to be marginalised by them.

"I think they (the American fund managers and investors and corporate figures) like the Malaysian story, but they want us to continue our reform measures because they say that the outcome is very important." Najib said they were also receptive to the proposed re-listing of Maxis Bhd.

"They were saying that it's a move in the right direction as this will give them a bigger opportunity to invest in bigger companies as some of them are managing funds worth trillions of dollars," he said.

Elaborating further, he said American financiers and investors had pointed out the lack of suitable companies for them to invest in Malaysia.

"They would like to see more Malaysian companies with big market capitalisation. They're not keen on small companies. So, size in terms of market capitalisation is important for them. They want to see more companies like Maxis Bhd." -- Bernama

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