Pengulas: Kapal Berita

Ada dua rencana dalam mesej ini. Saya tidak menterjemahkannya, cukuplah dengan mengambil sedikit kesimpulan berita dan beberapa ulasan.

FINANCIAL TIMES:

Renong merupakan syarikat yang amat banyak berhutang, kira-kira $28 bilion pada tahun 1997. UEM seringkali menjadi tukang penyelamat.... dan semua peniaga saham yang waras tahu sebahagian besar saham UEM dipegang oleh dana awam yang dimiliki rakyat.

Deal terbaru UEM membeli hutang RM$3.58 bilion dari Renong menyebabkan pasaran saham merudum sakan sehingga saham UEM menjunam 40%, manakala saham Renong susut 20%. Ia menggambarkan kurangnya keyakinan dan sokongan para pelabur akan tindakkan UEM.

Sepatutnya institusi diselamatkan, bukan beberapa individu yang tersayang. Sikap pihak tertentu yang membiarkan wang rakyat mencurah-curah menyookong satu perniagaan yang tempang sungguh tidak menyenangkan. Ia hanya memberikan lebih ruang untuk orang yang tidak pandai mengurus menambah semakin banyak hutang dan malang kepada dana institusi awam. Dengan mengekalkan pengurusan yang tidak berkelayakkan itu, kita hanya akan mengundang kemusnahan.

Kebangkrapan Renong mungkin akan memusnahkan sistem perbankan tempatan. Kerajaan Umno nampaknya lebih sayang seorang dari berjuta-juta orang. Jika gejala ini dibiarkan berterusan, bersiap sedialah Malaysia untuk menghadapi kekeringan dana di masa akan datang. Bila itu berlaku akan ranaplah bank tempatan, dan akan hancurlah sistem kewangan. Bila itu berlaku wawasan hanya menjadi angan-angan yang tidak kesampaian.....

BERNAMA:

Hutang luar Malaysia berjumlah RM156.9 billion pada tempoh akhir September tahun ini, menurut Timbalan Menteri Kewangan, Minister Datuk Chan Kong Choy, di Dewan Rakyat Selasa lalu.

Kerajaan terpaksa membayar RM8 billion untuk bunga faedah tahun depan, sebanyak RM7.9 billion pada tahun 2002 dan RM7.7 billion pada tahun 2003.

Kita mungkin perlu bertanya cukupkah wang negara untuk menampung hutang yang sering berulang. Beratnya tangan untuk memberi pembayaran bonus kepada pegawai kerajaan kini sudah pun menjawab beberapa persoalan. Itu belum dikira lagi hak royalti rakyat yang dinafikan.

Malaysia fails the radar-screen test

The country's fall from investment grace may be due to its slowness on corporate debt restructuring, writes Joe Leahy

Published: December 13 2000 16:55GMT
Last Updated: December 13 2000

Omar Merican, a fund manager with Lotus Asset Management in Kuala Lumpur, received a shock when he attended an investment briefing by Dell Computer Corp in Hong Kong last month.

Asian countries from India to Japan were featured in a slide comparing their relative merits as investment destinations. However, Mr Merican's home country, known as a regional centre for foreign electronics and computer producers including Dell, was absent from the list.

"We've clearly dropped off the radar screen," Mr Merican said.

Malaysia's fall from foreign investor grace has been due to its slow corporate debt restructuring, critics say.

Three years after the Asian financial crisis, much progress has been made in clearing bad loans from the banking sector but the problems of the biggest corporate debtors have yet to be resolved.

P K Basu, senior economist at Credit Suisse First Boston in Singapore, says: "The heavy lifting is still to be done in terms of the restructuring of some of the debt of the larger companies."

The issue has come to the fore following a series of transactions surrounding Renong, the country's largest industrial conglomerate, and an associate, United Engineers Malaysia (UEM), the nation's biggest construction firm.

Renong, the former investment vehicle of Malaysia's ruling party, owns 38 per cent of UEM.

Following the Asian financial crisis in 1997, it was unveiled as the country's largest corporate borrower with debts of about M$28bn (US$7.4M).

The pair first made headlines in November 1997 when UEM bought 32.3 per cent of Renong in a move perceived as a bail-out of its parent.

To appease investor objections at the time, Renong executive chairman Halim Saad offered UEM a put option, due to expire next February, to buy back the stake. This week, however, UEM extended the deadline for payment of the put option by 15 months.

The deal followed another last month in which UEM offered to take over M$3.58bn of Renong's debt in exchange for several indebted companies as collateral in a package valued at M$5.43bn. Investors did not like either transaction. UEM's share price has plunged about 40 per cent since the debt deal was announced while Renong's has fallen nearly 20 per cent. Analysts argue that neither transaction has contributed to a comprehensive restructuring of Renong. As a result, they have damaged the credibility of Malaysia's efforts to solve its corporate debt burden.

"It's not so much how much the stock has lost in the short term," says Uday Jayaram, senior analyst at ING Barings in Kuala Lumpur. "What we have really lost is the opportunity to be able to say 'Yes we are restructuring' to give us a hope of benefiting when foreign fund flows come back into Asia."

The slowness of restructuring is also having an impact on the banking sector, analysts say. Banks have only just started to write off loans they were initially hoping would be restructured, resulting in a rise in non-performing loans in recent months. Phoa Su Sian, ABN Amro banking analyst in Malaysia, says: "There is a broad sense that a lot of the NPLs, particularly those associated with the larger corporate debtors, were undeclared. Actual NPLs could be 10 to 40 per cent higher than the banks are declaring."

The impact that a bankruptcy of a company such as Renong might have on the banking system could be devastating, leading many to believe there is a need for bail-outs of the larger corporates. But they say such moves should be accompanied by management changes to ensure the same practices are not perpetuated. "The right thing to do is to save the institution, not the person," says one domestic investment banker in Kuala Lumpur.

Ironically, one deal that has been better received by the investment community is the proposed sale of a 29 per cent stake in Malaysian Airline System by Naluri, a company controlled by another businessman with strong political connections, Tajudin Ramli.

Mr Tajudin is hoping the government will buy back his stake at the price he paid in 1994, M$8 per share, more than twice its market value today. But investors have been cheered by the prospect of the government selling the stake to a foreign investor, possibly SAirGroup, the parent of Swissair.

"The cost I think to the whole system would be lower in the longer term if the government just buys these people out and sells the companies to someone else," said an analyst. If that happens, Malaysia may one day find its way back onto the foreign investor radar screen.

http://www.bernama.com/bernama/business/bu1212_13.htm

December 12 , 2000 17:47PM

M'SIA'S EXTERNAL DEBTS STAND AT RM156.9 BILLION TILL SEPTEMBER

KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 12 (Bernama) -- Malaysia's foreign debts totalled RM156.9 billion at the end of September this year, Deputy Finance Minister Datuk Chan Kong Choy told the Dewan Rakyat on Tuesday.

He said RM76.2 billion or 48.6 per cent of the debts were incurred by the public sector and RM80.7 billion or 51.4 per cent by the private sector.

Domestic debts totalled RM625.6 billion, with the private sector responsible for 81.6 per cent of it and 18.4 per cent by the public sector, he said.

The Federal Government's foreign debts amounted to RM18.9 billion as at September this year while internal debts totalled RM104.8 million, he said when replying to Ramli Ibrahim (PAS-Kota Baharu) during question time.

He said the government's foreign debts were not linked to any mega project.

The government had to pay RM8 billion in interests for the debts next year, RM7.9 billion in 2002 and RM7.7 billion in 2003, he said.

Chan said the government did not make policies to raise taxes to repay its debts and in fact, it had reduced income tax in the last three years. He said Malaysia was in the category of countries with moderate debts based on the evaluation by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

To a supplementary question from Hoo Seong Chang (BN-Kluang), Chan said Malaysia still made small borrowings to maintain good relations with international financial institutions like the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.

Prior to the economic downturn, the government practised a policy to reduce debts through pre-payments and refinancing to cut down on borrowing costs, he said.

"Now that the economy has recovered, the country has reverted to its previous policy. With improved economic climate, it is hoped that the private sector would play its past role as the engine of growth and would not rely on the government to stimulate economic growth," he added.