19		112	Malaysia, Chinese, trade, Singapore, resources

Chinese President Hu Jintao has different ways of observing the anniversary of diplomatic links with two rival states across the straits. 

Challenging the feel-good media hype in Malaysia over the 35th anniversary of diplomatic links, China chose to contrast President Hu's Tuesday visit to Kuala Lumpur with a significant economic agenda. Whereas, in observing the 20th anniversary of official links with Singapore, Hu said China would loan a pair of pandas to the host of the APEC meeting this year.

While mainstream media had positioned Hu's visit as a reenactment of the establishment of diplomatic ties in 1974 by the late prime minister Abdul Razak Hussein, father of Malaysia's current premier, China wrapped huge packages of government-to-government (G2G) business deals within a whirlwind stop-over, making Malaysia ever more dependent on the Chinese yuan.

Hu left for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Singapore after a 20-hour stay in Malaysia.

By employing the same strategy it successfully tested in Africa, that is gaining access to resource supplies in host countries in return for yuan-denominated aid for infrastructure, China will now bankroll transport and utility infrastructure projects in return for Malaysian palm oil and timber.

According to the memorandums of understanding (MoUs) signed by the two countries in conjunction with Hu's visit, China is to officially finance projects in the railway, bridge, water and energy sectors.The official speak for the deals is "strategic cooperations in all fields."

As the icing on the cake, Malaysia gave a second banking licence to the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) to expand its network in Malaysia. Banking is a hugely regulated industry in Malaysia and there have been protracted restrictions on the issuance of such licences, especially to foreign banks. The other Chinese bank operating in Malaysia is the Bank of China (BoC).

Commenting on the signing of the MoUs, Godrej International Ltd director Dorab Mistry said China being the world’s largest edible oil importer would continue
to be a very good buyer of Malaysian palm oil.

With an economy growing at least 6 percent annually since 1997, per capita consumption in China is expected to grow between 3 and 4 percent, and that requires the country to secure a continuous supply of natural resources to sustain its economy, Mistry added.

Over the years, booming bilateral trade has made China the second-largest market for Malaysia’s exports valued at RM46.8 billion (US$13.8 billion). On the other hand, Malaysia has now become China’s largest trading partner among Asean countries at US$53 billion (RM179.67 billion) last year.

Deals signed

Of the deals signed Tuesday, China will be involved in two infrastructure projects in the state of Penang, a state Hu visited in 2002 when he was China's deputy president.

The two projects are the second bridge linking Penang and the mainland, and the expansion of the Mengkuang Dam for water supply to Penang and areas nearby.

For the second bridge linking Penang and the mainland, the credit agreement was signed by the Export-Import Bank of China, a state export credit agency, and Jambatan Kedua Sdn Bhd, which is assigned for the building of the superstructure for the bridge. The deal was inked in the form of a Preferential Buyer’s Credit loan agreement.

China Harbour Engineering Co (CHEC) and UEM Builders Bhd are the main contractors for the Penang Second Bridge, which is now delayed. The Chinese government is providing a US$800 million loan for the project.

Besides, Global Rail Sdn Bhd, a Chinese company, has been awarded a contract to co-develop a RM28 billion (US$8.2 billion) double-track railway that will link Johor Bahru, Malaysia's southern exit to Singapore, to Gemas in the centrally-located state of Negeri Sembilan.

In addition, Malaysia will engage Chinese companies, whose names were not announced, for the construction of a pulp and paper mill and aluminum smelter in the East-Malaysian state of Sarawak.

Another MoU signed was for China's Beijing Enterprise Water Group Ltd. to partner Malaysian on improving the country’s sewerage services.

On the financial sector, Bank Negara Malaysia signed a MoU with the China Banking Regulatory Commission on banking supervision cooperation in the area of financial regulatory initiatives between the two nations. This is seen as setting the rules of engagement to facilitate more inflow of yuan aid into Malaysia.

6		139	Brain-drain, impedes, investment

UPDATED VERSION. INVESTORS choose their centres of operations carefully, often by prioritising the proximity to human capital as a rule of thumb.

This investment requirement triggered a dilemma in Penang, which had recently lost out on a multi-billion ringgit foreign investment because it could not guarantee the adequate supply of experienced electrical and electronic (E&E) engineers.

Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng, who is also a Paeliamentarian, recently told the House of Representatives that the state lost US$3 billion (RM10.2 billion) worth of foreign investment because it could not commit to supplying 1,000 engineers to the investors.

While rival political parties were swift to capitalise on the issue to criticise the Chief Minister for letting go a vast opportunity, the issue had exposed a new reality in Malaysia -- the country's position in global competitiveness.

It was imperative of Chief Minister Lim to clarify as Penang is considered as the country’s Silicon Valley. “I didn’t turn down their investment but they did not want to come because I could not give them a guarantee,” he was quoted in Singapore's Straits Times as having told The Star recently.

This difficulty in getting bulk numbers of experienced engineers in specific fields was acknowledged by the Human Resource Minister today.

The Penang Chapter of the Institute of Engineers Malaysia (IEM) today said that of the 1,350 engineers on its register, only 260 were trained in the field of E&E.

Penang hosts major manufacturing plants that carry international marques in the E&E industry, including Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, and photonics player like Osram Opto Semiconductors and medical device producer B.Braun.

Last year, Penang obtained RM10.2 billion worth of FDI, in contrast to the national total FDI of RM46 billion.

Brain-drain vs. Brain-gain

To give the issue a perspective and a context, I was actually contacted by the Straits Times on the same issue in my official capacity as the Chief Minister's Chief of Staff.

The issue we faced was that the specifications laid down by the potential investor from Europe were tough to be met with a guarantee.

It was a huge task to guarantee a steady supply of over 1,000 experienced E&E engineers in one go as most of them were currently employed in industries already entrenched in Penang.

I had grounded my observation based on supporting data from the state Human Resource Department and the Northern Chapter of the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers (FMM).

Nevertheless, I also indicated that by recruiting foreign talents -- some suggested India for its English-speaking competency -- to fulfil the headcounts required may be contradictory to the objective of nurturing our human resource capital in the long run.

More importantly, I attributed the shortage of experienced E&E engineers to the decades-old brain-drain -- the exodus of good talents from Malaysia -- to the benefit of neighbouring economies. This was somewhat supported by a sidebar story in the Straits Times on the same day.

According to the Malaysian Employers Federation (MEF) quoted in the story, there are 785,000 Malaysians who work overseas, and an estimated two out of every three among them are likely to be professionals.

The MEF added that of the Malaysian professionals who work abroad, 44 per cent are in Singapore and 28 per cent in other parts of Asia, with the rest residing in other parts of the world.

It appeared that the government was well aware of the brain-drain issue as in 2000, it had launched a programme aimed at wooing them back to the country with offers of tax and duties exemptions. Professionals targetted included doctors, engineers and IT experts.

However, response had been lukewarm. The MEF said only 770 respondents were approved since then, which translates into an average of 85 each year.

That probably prompted the same government to announce a brain-gain programme recently.

On October 23, Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak announced in his maiden budget speech that said new incentives will be offered to attract foreign talents. Besides making it easier for them to apply for permanent resident status, visas would also be granted automatically to working and dependent expatriate family members within 14 days.

However, critics were skeptical of the success as things often boil down to salaries and expectations.

Shamsuddin Bardan, the executive director of MEF, which is an umbrella trade body for 4,000 private-sector employers, pointed out that it all boiled down to salaries.

He gave an example: A senior engineer working in the US could make about RM30,000 a month, compared to about RM20,000 in Malaysia. The pasture was greener elsewhere, hence the exodus.

On the political ground, the opposition has long highlighted the serity of the brain-drain effect. The hypothesis had been that Malaysian professionals ventured overseas due to  higher pay beyond Malaysia, and equal opportunity offered to the best talents irrespective of race and religion.

Meanwhile, the standard of the command of English among new entrants in the job market had been waning, largely due to the country’s education system that produced umemployable graduates.

 

 

1		4	Malaysia PM, Najib Abdul Razak, 6-9, GDP blunder

SIX OR NINE? It must have been the most awkward moment for Malaysian Prime Minister-cum-Finance Minister Najib Abdul Razak yesterday. He was made to look stupid on the rudiments of economics: The GDP growth rate.

Worse, he made the blunder at a congregation of knowledge workers who assembled for the MSC Malaysia Implementation Council meeting. When all faces blushed, multimedia took over to spread the big snafu that the PM's speech-writers probably made, far and wide.

The case in hand was that, in earnest political posturing for a high-income generation that needed prime-pumping of enhanced per capita income in a short span, the PM boasted that Malaysia's annual GDP growth would be sustained at 9 per cent year-on-year until 2020.

Nine per cent? I thought that was close to impossible because Malaysia had been tracking at 6.5 per cent when neighbouring economies were advancing at close to 10 percent during boom time in the last two years.

Nonetheless, SMS-bound news alerts were swiftly disseminated by pro-government media, and I received mine through The Star.

Hours later came the turnaround. A new batch of news alerts were transmitted to SMS subscribers. The PM was forced to revise downwards his target of annual GDP growth to 6 percent.

By then, digital records were adequately archived by the country's major news providers like The Star and national news agency Bernama. All had quoted the PM's blunder in pronouncing a 9 per cent GDP growth. It was so unrealistic a target that even senior editors at the newsroom business desks and government economic planners couldn't reconcile.

Subsequently, PM Najib saw it pertinent to call an immediate press conference within hours of his speech earlier in the day to correct the errata. He was made to eat his words and reiterated that his government’s target was actually 6 per cent annual GDP growth. Quote:

“I didn't say nine per cent, I said around six per cent as nine is not realistic. We have to achieve six per cent as we have to be realistic to achieve a higher growth rate when the economy has really recovered.

“We have not fully recovered from the recession. As you know, our economy depends on the export market. I'm not talking about achieving it now, I'm talking about post-recession," Najib told reporters.

It was as recently as October 23, when the PM delivered his maiden budget speech in the Parliament, that Malaysians were told to brace for further tardiness of the economy as growth rate would still shrink 3 per cent this year. And that growth in 2010 would only be expected to recover to 2-3 percent, at best. While there had been no miracle turnaround in recent months, it was believed that the impact of the global economic downturn would still be heading to uncertain waters.

Even at 6 percent growth, there was no denying that Najib's government had to redouble its efforts, besides identifying new growth areas from now until 2020 in order to make Malaysia a developed nation as envisioned by former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad in 1995.

In absolute terms, Malaysia needs to more than double its gross national income from US$7,000 (RM24,500) to at least US$17,000 by 2020 in order to qualify as a high-income nation according to World Bank classification.

However, the latest World Bank projections indicated that Malaysia’s near-term outlook continued to track at a slow recovery rate. The World Bank projected Malaysia's GDP growth to contract 2.3 per cent this year, and grow by 4.1 per cent in 2010.

2		9	Palm, Oil:, Human, rights, triumph, over, manufactured, consent?

GLOBAL human rights movement in protection of tribal minorities may have dealt a huge blow to gigantum economic forces in Malaysia.

The latest to come down under the pressure of human rights advocates is the palm oil industry.

According to an update on the website of Survial International yesterday, it was reported that the advertising regulator in the United Kingdom had banned an advertisement placed by the Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC).

The magazine advertisement claimed that Malaysian palm oil was ‘sustainable’ and contributed to ‘the alleviation of poverty, especially amongst rural populations'.

However, The UK’s Advertising Standards Agency banned the advertisement, ruling that those claims, and many others, were misleading and could not be substantiated.

Incidentally, the tribal minority highlighted as the victims of the palm oil industry profiteering is the Penan community in the Malaysian state of Sarawak, or a part of the forlorn Borneo remembered in its colonial history.

Over decades, the Penans had been fighting a losing battle to stop the massive chopping down of forests, their natural habitat, to benefit the timber-logging companies and to make way for oil palm plantations.

Advocates of the Penans' human rights have been calling on the Malaysia government to halt deforestation activities and logging on the Penans' land without their consent. But to no avail.

Meanwhile, palm oil has grown to make Malaysia the most dominant vegetable oil producer in the global market. On the flip of the coin, it has also become target of anti-tropical oil lobbyists, notably in the developed economies in the US and Euro Community, where inherent players in the edible oil market faced apparent threats.

Manufacturing of consent

In the face of such competitive environment, the palm oil industry and the Malaysian government employed a phenomenon well-described by Noam Chomsky in the 1980s: The manafacturing of consent using the media.

Numerous reactive measures were taken to counter the lobbyists' manoeuvres, which included the hiring of public relations specialists in the US to address the issues of negative perception and allegations over the nutritional characteristics of palm oil produced in Malaysia.

Subsequently, MPOC was set up as a state-sponsored entity to take the lobbyists head on in their territories. Its regional offices are now present in California in the US, Brussels in the EU, Shanghai in People's Republic of China, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey and Egypt.

Homafwever, the ban of the advertisement in the UK market may have taken a new nuance, in that manufactured consent to favour palm oil is now linked to violation of human rughts of a tribal minority.

In a statement issued yesterday, Survival International director Stephen Corry said: "Claims that Malaysian palm oil is green and people-friendly will not wash, especially with the Penan. The industry’s expansion onto their land is a disaster."

"Oil palm plantations and logging are destroying the forests the Penan hunt and gather in, and polluting the rivers they fish in," Survival International said. "Without their forests they have difficulty finding enough food."

In what looks like a public relations exercise by the human rights advocate, the statement carried a reaction on behalf of the Penans:

"Our people welcome the ban on the magazine advert by the Malaysian Palm Oil Council. How come the advert claimed that palm oil helps alleviate poverty, when from the very beginning oil palm plantations have destroyed our source of livelihood and made us much poorer? A lot of people are hungry every day because our forest has been destroyed."

Of late, the Penans had faced serious threats besides destruction of their natural habitat. There were cases of Penan young girls sexually assaulted without any justice given.

As a legislator, I have submitted a motion in the current sitting of the House of Representative in the Malaysian Parliament. The motion was cued under Motion No. 64 [Ref: PR-1223-U34075] which says:

"THAT the House shall acknowledge that reports relating to young girls of the Penan tribe in the territory of Baram, Sarawak, who are exposed to the threats of rape, violation of modesty and sexual torture perpetrated by the operators of timber logging warrant immediate attention, and efforts should be swiftly taken to summon the authorities to commit to providing them protection, and to mete appropriate punishment to the perpetrators who terrorised the Penans."

Thus far, the Home Affairs Minister,who is entrusted to uphold public safety, had taken no action on the issue.

1		1	Sending, off, Nine, Emperor, Gods,, Phuket

THE NINE-DAY Nine Emperor Gods Festival, a Taoist ritual widely observed in Southeast Asia, features prominently in the tourist calendar of the Buddhist island of Phuket, Thailand.

The annual festival, stretching from the first to the ninth day of the Ninth Moon in the lunar calendar, is punctuated with strict abstinence of non-vegetarian diet among the devotees. That may be the reason Nine Emperor Gods festival is known in Thai as the Tesagan Gin, or simply, the Vegetarian Festival.

 

 

This year, the festival lasted from October 18 through 26. It was a carnival-like reception in Phuket, where about 35 percent of the population is Chinese.

Two colours ornamented the touristic island throughout the festival - white and yellow.

 

 

Those who participate in the festival, besides observing the strict vegetarian diet, will dress all in white. Banners and flags denoting the observance are presented in yellow materials, caligraphed in red letterings. Restaurants and make-shift food stalls adopt the yellow-red regime to indicate their offerings are compliant with the vegetarian practice.

Our tour guide mentioned that much of the ritualistic activities that signify the fulfilment of vows are conducted on the fifth and sixth days of the festival. It involves blessing-seeking by the devotees, blessing-giving by the deities through mediums in trance. Significantly, there is also redemption of vows in the form of mortification of the flesh by piercing the body, tongue or cheeks with skewers that are similar to the rituals inherent in the Indian festival of Thaipusam.

The only difference in such bodily mortification in Phuket is that the skewers often carry swords, banners, machine guns, table lamps, flowers and even bicycles.

 

 

By night, there are other forms of rituals at the the temples during the festival, like firewalking, blade-ladder climbing and boiling-oil bathing.

Landing in Phuket on the last day of the festival, I was showered with the opportunity to observe the grand send-off for the Nine Emperor Gods.

It was held at the city square of Phuket around 10pm. Mediums in trance representing the deities from 14 temples on the island took their cue for the finale. Thousands of devotees in white lined the narrow roads, with hundreds taking the march trailing the dieties.

 

 

A peculiar scene uniquely Phuket is the incessant rounds of fire-crackers that were let off for the entire procession that lasted almost three hours. Some of the fire-crackers were launched onto the path of the deities and the follower-devotees.

It was a risky sojourn as I joined many onlookers to only become targets of these bazookas of fire-crackers aimed at people who crossed roads. But it was fun and an eye-opener even for a person residing in this part of the world.

 

[ MORE, a set of 16 pictures are available on my Flickr. It was a 1-camera 1-lens outing that had put Nikon D3 and Sigma F/1.4 50mm to severe tests on the lens' optical properties and thebody's noise threshold. ]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

		6	Parliament:, 4Mbps, line, sleepy, netbook

I NEED to know who the Malaysian Parliament had engaged to install the computing facilities on the desk of each Member of Parliament at the start of this Budget Session.

The intention was noble but execution was third class, to say the least.

First, the kudos.

Bearing in mind that a vast majority of the 222-seat Lower House (Dewan Rakyat) are computer illiterates, and most of them are from the 140-seat Government's bench, the computerisation effort is a step towards turning the e-idiots into a bunch of wannabes who will now look savvy in front of roving TV cameras.

At the very least, the first page that pops up on the screen, pre-booted by Parliament attendants, is to enable them to sign in their daily attendance. It's a no-brainer as the MPs will be greeted with their respective mugshots, and a click-on-the-mouse is what it takes to secure their daily subsistence allowance as a federal legislator.

In terms of hardware being fixed assets of the Parliament, the 10-inch LCD screen is screwed to the MP's table, effectively preventing theft. Affixed is a wired keyboard and a wired mouse.

However, to the net-savvy, and most if not all of the 82-seat MPs from the Opposition Bench truly are, of which I am one, the computing specs are entry level kits fit for kindergarten.

With all intents and purposes, the wired Internet connectivity is passable with 4Mbps on SDSL. But no doubt, the "best effort" corporate mentality of the ISPs will ensure that access speed to sites located beyond Malaysia's border router snarls up a little.

There's a 100Gb harddisk that is linked to no USB ports for external drive or flash memory or network printer. Neither is it equipped with a DVD-ROM drive though MPs are occasionally given documentary materials on CDs.

However, the unforgivable sin is an outmoded ATOM-chipset netbook-speed central processor that hangs the machines once over four Windows Explorer tabs are launched on the browser. It's like pouring aircraft fuel into the tank that refuses to fire on all four cylinders.

Net net, you spent big money that only placed big, fat 222 white elephants in the hall.

Which IT consultants drew the specs for this mismatch? The way Malaysia goes, the MPs may have to wait out till the 2009 Auditor-General's Report not due before next October.

So what we do? I have to shaft away the keyboard and the whole shebang that now occupy half of my workbench, and revert to my trusty HP Pavillion notebook, or sometimes the Vaio P25G, a netbook no doubt that drives faster than the Parliament's new toys for the MPs.

Incidentally, the Prime Minister/Finance Minister punctuated his maiden Budget Speech by saying that Malaysia has to do catch-up in broadband adoption. "The current broadband penetration rate in Malaysian households is 26%, against 88% in Singapore and 95% in South Korea," he said.

And, the last time the Speaker of the House remarked on my blog entry about him, he admitted that he was reading from a copy printed by the Parliament secretary.

I ain't finished yet. I still need to find out who the Malaysian Parliament had engaged to install these flabby computers on each of our MP's desk. Computer speaking, they made the strong weak in order to make the weak strong. No good.