Sumber: FAR EASTERN ECONOMIC REVIEW

Pengulas : Kapal Berita

SEULAS KATA

Saya tersenyum simpul sendirian memikirkan nasib beberapa syarikat yang diswastakan oleh Mahathir. Dia memberi syarikat 'jalan', 'balak', 'sampah', 'najis' dan 'kapal emas' kepada orang-orang yang dianggap sebagai tokoh perniagaan melayu, dengan alasan merekalah nanti akan memercu kejayaan demi kejayaan buat negara di mata dunia. Nampaknya harapan itu sudah tidak lagi berpijak di alam nyata. Syarikat-syarikat itu tidak lagi memberikan kebanggaan kepada negara, sebaliknya ia membuatkan kita menjadi bahan sindiran dan ketawa. Rupa-rupanya kita semakin kaya berhutang!

Hati saya semakin tercuit lagi bila satu-satunya projek emas diktator sewel itu terbang dan terbengkalai.....(teringat pula penulis akan siri YTDT oleh Pak -MT- sewaktu menulis rencana ini) kerana banyak jejaka muda luar negara diberitakan berminat untuk menyunting bunga MAS itu menarik diri. Akhirnya jejaka 'tua dan pencen' pula disebut-sebut ingin melamar syarikat yang sudah pudar kilauan emas itu. Nampaknya bersuami tua lah anak emas yang suka terbang itu....

TERJEMAHAN RINGKAS RENCANA FEER

Rencana FEER menyebut Tajuddin kini sudah menjadi sasaran kritikan oleh media tempatan sendiri, termasuk Mahathir dan seorang MP kerajaan. Kita tidak hairan dengan dengan telatah Mahathir, kerana ia penuh dengan muslihat yang tersebnyi dibawah kepak kapalterbang.

Kerajaan Malaysia kini sedang menyediakan dana $471 juta untuk mengambil alih pegangan Tajuddin sebanyak 29% dalam MAS. Saham MAS bernilai RM8 ketika Tajuddin membelinya 7 tahun dulu dan ia adalah 1 1/2 kali ganda harga masakini. Dengan membeli saham tersebut pada kadar Tajuddin akan memperolehi $210 juta tunai setelah dia membayar beberapa hutang.

Tapi itupun belum cukup untuk merawat MAS. Syarikat itu sedang terbang menjunam buat kali ke 4 dalam kerugian, dan ia mungkin mencecah angka $160 juta dalam fiskal Mac 2001 menurut analis.

Namun Tajuddin berpendapat MA lebh teguh daripada yang dijangka dan walaupun harga yang ditawarkan itu samadengan harga asalnya, dia merasa ia masih tidak memadai.

GANGGUAN POLITIK

Kemelut menghantui MAS itu sebenarnya bukan disebabkan oleh pengurusan tempang Tajuddin sahaja. Kerajaan Mahathir sendiri memainkan peranan memudarkan emas yang berkilauan itu. Kuasa veto kerajaan melaui pegangan tidak langsung dalam MAS membuatkan banyak syarikat komersil teragak-agak untuk mengambil-alih MAS.

Masalah MAS bermula sejak 1972 lagi bila ia berpecah dengan SIA. SIA menjadi syarikat antarabangsa sedangkan MAS mengutip emas murahan dalam pasaran domestik.

Masalahnya MAS mengekalkan banyak penerbangan domestik yang tidak menguntungkan dengan harapan penerbangan antarabangsanya dapat menampung kerugian itu. Tetapi itupun tidak cukup untuk melegakan keadaan kerana sasaran penerbangan antarabangsa MAS lebih bergantung kepada polisi luar negara daripada kepentingan komersil. Dengan kata lain, MAS dipandu oleh politik, dan bukan dipandu oleh syarikat.

Menurut sumber MAS, ia rugi RM1 juta setiap hari dalam penerbangan domestiknya. Itu menyumbangkan semua kerugian tahun lepas dan tahun ini juga. Sebabnya ialah kenaikan harga minyak sebanyak 3 kali ganda sejak tahun lepas kepada $30 setong, sedangkan harga tambang masih diparas lama sejak 1992 lagi. Permintaan kenaikan tambang 50% tidak diperdulikan oleh kerajaan.

MAS terpaksa mensubsidikan tambang untuk tujuan politik kerajaan pemerintah. Kerajaan juga mengacau MAS lagi pada pertengahan 1997 bila $1.2 bilion 'rights issue' untuk hutangnya ditangguhkan dengan alasan ia akan melembapkan pasaran. Kerajaan hanya meluluskannya bila keadaan terlalu lewat untuk menyelamatkan apa-apa. Ekonomi negara telah menjunam dengan teruknya.

Pada ketika yang sama SIA lebih menyinar. SIA dijangka untung $650 juta pada tempoh sehingga Mac, walaupun pasarannya sama besar dengan MAS. Tajuddin memang patut dipersalahkan juga kerana sejak beliau menerajui MAS pada 1994, MAS semakin terkebelakang berbanding saingannya di Thailand dan Singapura.

Tajuddin melakukan 3 kesalahan sirius:

1. Dia telah meminggirkan 16,000 kakitangan MAS. Dia pernah mengucapkan satu kata-kata yang masyhur satu ketika dulu bahawa jika MAS bungkus, kakitangan MAS lah puncanya, bukan beliau. Lagipun, tambahnya lagi, beliau boleh kembali menerajui syarikat lain yang milik beliau. (Tajuddin mengatakan beliau bergurau sahaja) Sejak itu 80 pemandu kapalterbang MAS telah beralih ke syarikat lain seperti Korean Airlines dan Singapore Airlines. Dalam beberapa kes, mereka mendapat gaji yang lebih sebanyak 2 kali ganda.
   

2. Dia tidak berbuat apa-apa terhadap kontrek pembelian minyak bila harga minyak naik mencanak. Ketika harga minyak berada di paras $12/tong 18 bulan lalu dia tak kesah. Kini harga itu sudah naik 3 kali ganda sedangkan dia masih terlena.
   

3. MAS asyik bersendirian dan tidak menyertai persekutuan seperti kumpulan 15 Star Alliance atau pesaing Star seperti Oneworld. Ini semakin mencederakan MAS kerana penumpang bisnes bergantung kepada jalinan kesepakatan tersebut untuk memudahkan perjalanan.

Krisis Ekonomi Asia yang melanda negara menyebabkan MAS tidak dapat terbang dengan senang lagi. Ia berhutang $2.7 bilion kerana membesarkan rangkaian kapalterbang pada penghujung tahun 1995, 18 bulan sebelum krisis. Krisis kewangan menyebabkan nilai matawang jatuh 50% dan itu lebih menyakitkan lagi kerana 25 kapalterbang yang dibeli itu dipesan dalam matawang dollar US.

POTONG LIPAT (PUSING CORNER LIPAT?)

Pada Mac 1998, pemandu MAS ditegur oleh pihak penerbangan British kerana mendarat dengan kapalterbang yang sudah hampir kekeringan minyak di Heathrow. Tajuddin menyangkal tuduhan itu bahawa ia berpunca daripada kesibukan lalulintas. (MAS sahaja yang sesak.. orang lain tidak sesak ke? - Penterjemah)

Sejak beberapa tahun terdapat bisikan bahawa Petronas lah yang telah menolong MAS dengan membayar gaji pekerjanya. Krew MAS mengesahkan hal ini, tetapi MAS menafikannya. Tajuddin menyangkal tuduhan itu - dia mengatakan aliran tunai MAS amat teguh sekali.

Setelah mengambil alih 19.1% pegangan MAS, kerajaan dijangka akan melantik pengurusan asing yang baru. Swissair dan KLM dijangka berminat tetapi sambutan kedua-dua syarikat tersebut masih dingin.

Syarikat luar agak ragu-ragu kerana ia masih tidak yakin apakah MAS akan terbang sebebas-bebasnya tanpa diikat. Walaupun Mahathir mengatakan kerajaan sanggup melepaskan kuasa veto atau "saham emas", kerajaan sebenarnya masih menguasai MAS melalui pegangan secara tidak langsung. Khazanah Holdings, Kem. Kewangan Inc, dan EPF masih menguasai 30% pegangan, disamping 29.1% yang akan dibeli nanti dari Tajuddin.

Menurut pemerhati, kerajaan masih mengikat MAS lagi...

Rencana FEER selebihnya tidak diterjemah.

Tetapi sila perhatikan bagaimana syarikat penerbangan Maldives ranap terus alang-alang pandainya Tajuddin memandu kapalterbang yang berpuaka itu. Salah hantukah atau salah memilih menantu? Jawapannya kini sedang berterbangan di negeri kecil itu dan saya pasti Tajuddin tidak ingin lagi terbang kesitu. Haru!

Rencana Asal:

PAGE 1: AVIATION

Coming Down to Earth

Malaysia Airlines' first experiment in privatization has gone awry and the government has agreed to buy out the present chairman. Now MAS is looking for a foreign partner

By Alkman Granitsas/KUALA LUMPUR and HONG KONG

Issue cover-dated December 7, 2000

"THE PROBLEM IS NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE KNOW THE CHAOS IN MAS; THE AIRLINE HAS WELL AND TRULY BEEN RUINED SINCE TAJUDIN RAMLI TOOK OVER."

-- July 31 posting on Internet pilot chatroom

IT'S HARD TO FIND ANYONE these days who has something nice to say about Tajudin Ramli, the embattled chairman of Malaysia Airlines. The daggers are drawn and the political tide has turned against him. In the past month, he's been criticized in Malaysia's tightly-controlled press, the prime minister says his days are numbered and, in parliament, one government MP has called for an investigation into the airline's finances.

Investors are cheering. The airline's share price has perked up again lately amid hopes that Tajudin will soon be gone. The only questions now are when he will leave and what it will take to fix the ailing carrier.

The first question is easy: Tajudin will be leaving very soon. As the REVIEW went to press, the Malaysian government was preparing a $471 million package to buy out Tajudin's 29% stake in the airline. The expected purchase price of 8 ringgit ($2.10) a share--which is what Tajudin himself paid seven years ago--is one-and-a-half times the current market price for MAS. It will leave him with some $210 million in cash after his other companies pay off their outstanding debts.

But then what? There is a lot to fix at Malaysia Airlines. The carrier is heading for its fourth straight year of losses--perhaps as much as $160 million in the fiscal year to March 2001, according to analysts. It's losing market share, wallowing under a mountain of debt and cutting costs just to stay airborne.

In an interview, Tajudin defends his record. He says the carrier is stronger than ever and the government is getting a bargain. "If you look at the airline we have developed now, on all counts the airline is a lot stronger and better. Even paying the same price I paid for the airline, I think I have been disadvantaged."

POLITICAL INTERFERENCE

Tajudin's management is only part of the trouble. It is well-known that Malaysia Airlines' problem is principally political--the government still retains an indirect stake in MAS and has the right to veto any major strategic decision. No commercial quick fix will turn the carrier around until the Malaysian government lets go of its grip on MAS. That's not very likely.

The seeds of Malaysia Airlines' current problems were sown many years ago--perhaps even as far back as 1972 when the carrier split with its former sibling and now arch rival, Singapore Airlines. Under the demerger of the two airlines, SIA wound up with the international routes and MAS with the domestic ones.

The problem for MAS is that many of the domestic routes are unprofitable, with fares kept artificially low and subsidized by the carrier's generally profitable international operations. Indeed, many of its national routes make no sense at all, and several of its international destinations are dictated more by government foreign policy and less by commercial considerations.

Take, for example, the twice-daily flights between Kuala Lumpur and the town of Ipoh, a city just a two-hour drive away from the capital. A one-way, economy class ticket costs just $17, not much more than bus fare. Another example is the daily flights to Johor Baru, the southern Malaysian city just across the causeway from Singapore. A one-way ticket to Johor Baru costs $24, but a one-way ticket to Singapore costs $58.

According to the airline, MAS loses 1 million ringgit ($260,000) each day on its domestic route network. That accounts for all of last year's losses and much of this year's losses. The reason is simple: Oil prices have tripled in the past year to around $30 per barrel, but domestic fares have been frozen in place since 1992. For months, Malaysia Airlines has been begging the government for a 50% hike in domestic fares, something it's unlikely to get.

"Malaysia Airlines badly needs the fare hike," says an analyst with a European brokerage in Kuala Lumpur. "At least half the problem at MAS is that it is a political animal. It has to subsidize fares for the national interest." There are other instances of government interference as well, although Tajudin is plainly reluctant to assign blame. One example was in mid-1997, when the carrier was preparing a $1.2 billion rights issue to refinance its debt. The government was worried that the rights issue would swamp the market and delayed it. When approval was finally given, the currency crisis had hit Malaysia and it was too late to raise money for anything.

Meanwhile, south of the border, former-sibling Singapore Airlines was widening the gap. The carrier is on track to report $650 million in profits in the year to March. Moreover, SIA has a market cap of around $12 billion--17 times that of MAS, although both carriers have a similar fleet size of about 100 aircraft and both serve a similar number of overseas destinations.

To be sure, Tajudin deserves his share of the blame. Since he took control of the carrier in 1994, MAS has fallen behind its immediate rivals in Thailand and in Singapore. And while MAS is heading towards its fourth consecutive year of losses, everyone else in the region is starting to make money.

"There is quite a lot of work to do to catch up," says Andrew Tan, an analyst at ABN Amro in Singapore. "The airline has slipped in its regional competitiveness. During the crisis, management was so concerned with damage control that they have not thought strategically. And all its competitors have surged ahead."

Tajudin has made at least three serious mistakes. First, he has alienated most of the airline's 16,000 employees. He famously told pilots two years ago that if the airline collapsed, they would bear the brunt of it, not him. After all, he explained, he could always go back to the other companies he owns. (Tajudin now says he was joking.) Since then, around 80 pilots have defected to jobs at other carriers like Korean Airlines and Singapore Airlines, in many cases, doubling their pay in the process.

Tajudin added insult to injury by pursuing what many consider an overtly political agenda of promoting Malays over other ethnic groups, and also by cutting benefits and pay. The average wage for a flight attendant is currently $1,100 month but is expected to be cut by 15% next year.

Tajudin's second mistake is more recent. The airline never hedged any of its fuel contracts. When oil was priced at just $12 a barrel 18 months ago, it didn't matter. But since then, oil prices have more than tripled. More than any other factor, it is the past year's rise in oil prices that is bringing the airline's many problems into stark relief this year.

Third, the carrier remains outside the world's international alliances like the 15-member Star Alliance or its main competitor oneworld. That hurts because high-paying business travellers rely on those alliances to make connections and earn frequent flyer miles. "We have been pursuing alliances for a quite a while," says Tajudin, unperturbed by the criticism. "But is there any disadvantage to not joining an alliance? If there are no major disadvantages, then why do it so quickly? Why do it and surrender so much?"

Then there is the legacy of the Asian Crisis. Malaysia Airlines is labouring under $2.7 billion in debt as a result of an ambitious fleet expansion that came at the wrong time. MAS ordered 25 aircraft in late 1995, just 18 months before Asia's economic crisis knocked the wind out of the regional travel market. The crisis also led to falls of up to 50% in regional currencies, including the ringgit, which hit all the region's airlines especially hard, given that both fuel costs and aircraft orders are priced in U.S. dollars.

That debt now consumes as much as 60% of the airline's operating cash flow, according to analysts. In an effort to reduce its debt burden, MAS has been selling off its aircraft and then leasing them back. About one fifth of the MAS fleet is now leased. The effect has been to save cash now at the expense of the carrier's major assets, it's aircraft.

CUTTING CORNERS?

"As I said, this company is very, very strong now," says Tajudin. "But it needs to address the loans. It's the same amount of loans that we had on the books before the crisis, but which have now become much bigger because of the [ringgit] peg."

Strapped for cash, many worry that the airline has been cutting corners. In May 1998, for example, a Malaysia Airlines pilot was reprimanded by British aviation authorities for landing with too little fuel for safety at London's Heathrow Airport. Tajudin blames the incident on flying conditions that day.

For several years, it has also been whispered that Malaysia's national oil company, Petronas, has been helping MAS stay aloft by directly paying staff salaries. Flight crew insist this is still the case, a charge that the company itself denies. "Never," says Tajudin. "Our cash flow is very, very strong. Our earnings before interest, tax, debt and amortization is about 1 billion ringgit. Our cash flow is so strong we don't need help paying salaries."

After buying back Tajudin's 29.1% stake, the government has indicated the next move will likely be to install a foreigner as chief executive. At the same time, the renationalized MAS will have to raise capital either through a rights issue, or possibly through a bond issue, say analysts. A foreign equity partner, possibly Swissair or KLM, may also be on the cards. Both airlines confirm that they are in talks with MAS, but remain noncommittal.

"In principle we are not eager to take a stake in Malaysian Airlines. We find it is not important to take a stake in a partner airline," says Bart Koster, spokesman for KLM, which has an extensive code-sharing agreement with MAS. But he says KLM is willing to pony up some cash if that's what the government needs to refinance MAS. "The financial situation of MAS is of course being discussed, and that is one of the options being discussed."

There are good reasons for a European carrier like KLM or Swissair to link up with MAS, among them geography and a shiny, new world-class airport. Like its immediate rivals in Singapore and Bangkok, the new Kuala Lumpur International Airport serves as a strategic link and refuelling stop on the lucrative routes between Europe and Australia.

But even if a foreign partner can be enticed to join the airline, the question is whether the government really will allow the airline to fly free. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad says the government is willing to give up its veto power over the airline, its so-called "golden share." But indirectly, the government still holds a substantial stake in the company. Government-linked investment companies like Khazanah Holdings, Minister of Finance Inc. and the Employees' Provident Fund, already hold a combined 30% stake in the carrier--add to that the 29% stake they will now buy back from Tajudin.

"I think the government will still insist on final say," says a Malaysian financial journalist. "There will still be behind the scenes manoeuvring. I have yet to see the Malaysian government give up control in any strategic industry."