KUCHING: The Tourism, Arts and Culture Ministry (Motac) is confident that tourism industry players are ready to receive foreign tourists when the country's borders reopen come April 1. Its minister Datuk Seri Nancy Shukri said before the decision to reopen the borders was made, her ministry had held meetings with tourism industry players. "(Yes, I'm sure) the Industry players are ready. Meanwhile, Nancy said to achieve the target of two million tourist arrivals, Motac had formulated various strategies to achieve the goal. "If we only focus on regular tourism, it may be difficult to reach a high number of tourists, so we need to create opportunities for MICE events to help industry players," she said.

KUALA LUMPUR: Stabilising the Covid-19 situation in the country should be prioritised before a general election is held, says Khairy Jamaluddin. “We want to see in the next few months if the reopening results in an increase in Covid-19 infections. “An increase in Covid-19 cases is okay, but we do not want a hike in hospital admissions,” he said. “We do not know if we will have to deal with new Covid-19 variants but this is something the ministry is monitoring. I believe he will also hear the views of the Health Ministry on public health concerns,” he said.

KUALA LUMPUR (March 10): The government will review the fuel and cooking oil subsidy mechanism, so that it will be more targeted towards aiding and subsidising the vulnerable groups and those who really need help, Finance Minister Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Tengku Abdul Aziz said. Tengku Zafrul said the current subsidy scheme entails subsidised prices enjoyed by all, regardless of rich or poor. "If the world crude oil price remains above US$100 per barrel, total subsidies for the whole of 2022 are expected to reach RM28 billion compared with RM11 billion for 2021." Tengku Zafrul said consumers currently pay only RM2.05 per litre for RON95 petrol but the actual cost in March had reached RM3.70 per litre. Hence, the increase in subsidy costs needs to be offset by increased revenue and cost savings,” he explained.

KUALA LUMPUR (March 10): The ringgit rebounded to trade slightly higher against the US dollar in the early trading session on Thursday (March 10) on improving risk appetite for the local currency. At 9.08am, the local note was trading at 4.1830/1860 versus the greenback compared with 4.1845/1875 at Wednesday’s close. SPI Asset Management managing partner Stephen Innes said lower oil prices provided a ray of hope for risk assets. Meanwhile, the ringgit was traded mostly lower against a basket of major currencies. It fell against the Singapore dollar to 3.0766/0793 from Wednesday’s 3.0739/0766 and declined against the euro to 4.6226/6259 from 4.5912/5945 previously.

KUALA LUMPUR: International travellers who are not fully vaccinated will still have to undergo quarantine after April 1, says Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin. “Those who have yet to be fully vaccinated or are not vaccinated at all must be quarantined for five days upon arrival. Khairy said fully vaccinated travellers arriving in the country less than a week before April 1 would still need to undergo mandatory quarantine. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob announced that Malaysians and international travellers who were fully vaccinated would not need to undergo quarantine upon arrival in the country from April 1 onwards. Fully vaccinated travellers only need to undergo an RT-PCR test two days prior to their departure and an RTK test within 24 hours of their arrival.

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia will reopen its borders to international travellers starting April 1, says Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob on Tuesday (March 8). As for travellers who have not been fully vaccinated, Ismail Sabri said the entry procedures will be explained by Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin on Wednesday (March 9). “As part of our “Transitioning to Endemicity” phase, the government has decided to reopen the country’s borders from April 1. The country’s borders have been shut since March 2020, while entry of foreign workers has been frozen due to the pandemic. Nearly 98% of Malaysia's adult population are fully vaccinated, while more than half have received booster shots.

KUALA LUMPUR (March 9): The US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has seized four shipments of Malaysian palm oil in Baltimore since Feb 11 due to information indicating that the commodity was manufactured by forced labour. In a statement on its website on Tuesday (March 8), the US CBP said the palm oil shipments are valued at nearly US$2.5 million (RM10.5 million). The US CBP, however, did not identify the Malaysian company which produced the palmitic acid in its statement. Palmitic acid is palm oil refined into a powder that can be easily incorporated into food, beverages, and skin and health care products. The US CBP said all four shipments of palmitic acid were produced in Malaysia and destined to a processing facility in Delaware.

Apart from these, we have a Labuan branch,” she tells The Edge in her first interview since taking the helm of JP Morgan Malaysia in January. “Additionally, Malaysia is a focus country for us globally,” she adds. “There is volatility as well, arising from geopolitical tensions,” Wong says, when asked about capital market opportunities in Malaysia amid that scenario. She points out that, globally, JPMorgan is the biggest underwriter of green and ESG-related bonds. JP Morgan Malaysia took the No 1 spot among foreign banks in terms of investment banking wallet share in the country last year, based on Dealogic rankings.

He said DNB’s ultra-lean design of the 5G network makes it approximately 15% more energy efficient compared to earlier cellular standards, including 4G LTE. YTL Communications chief executive officer Wing K. Lee said the company had received “very encouraging” response on the 5G network as customers are experiencing excellent speeds and low latency. He added that the network was resilient, performing as expected, and was managed by the state-of-the-art DNB 5G Network Operations Centre (NOC). In a separate statement, Ericsson said DNB’s 5G network will be the world’s first commercial network to apply Ericsson’s dynamic radio resource partitioning (DRP), a 5G radio access network (RAN) slicing solution. “This innovation also allows each MNO to differentiate its offering to consumers on the shared 5G network,” he said.

PETALING JAYA: Only two serious reports of adverse events following immunisation (AEFI) involving children between the ages of five and 11 have been recorded as at Feb 25. A total of 94 AEFI reports involving vaccine recipients aged between five and 11 years old were received as of Feb 25, with only two reports categorised as serious, she added. WHO, which has established a Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety in order to respond promptly to any concern over vaccines, said vaccine-associated adverse events may affect healthy individuals and should be promptly identified to allow additional research and appropriate action to take place. Health care providers are required to report AEFI, which is unwanted or unexpected health effect that happens after someone receives a vaccine, which may or may not be caused by the vaccine. An AEFI report can be made through MySejahtera, or via www.npra.gov.my.

KUALA LUMPUR: The Employees Provident Fund (EPF) has declared a dividend rate of 6.1% for Conventional Savings 2021, with payout amounting to RM50.5bil and 5.65% for Syariah Savings 2021 with a payout amounting to RM6.3bil. Last year, EPF declared dividends of 5.2% for Conventional Savings 2020 and 4.9% for Syariah Savings 2020. The past decade saw EPF’s dividend payout for Conventional Savings at 5.8% in 2010 followed by 6% (2011), 6.15% (2012), 6.35% (2013), 6.75% (2014), 6.4% (2015), 5.7% (2016), 6.9% (2017), 6.15% (2018), 5.45% (2019) and 5.2% (2020). For Syariah Savings, it recorded dividends of 6.4% in 2017, 5.9% in 2018, 5% in 2019 and 4.9% last year (2020). More to comeArticle type: free User access status:Join our Telegram channel to get our Evening Alerts and breaking news highlights

Formerly an oil palm plantation owned by Batu Kawan Bhd, Batu Kawan covers 6,781 acres. The opening of the Sultan Abdul Halim Muadzam Shah Bridge in 2014 helped create further interest in Batu Kawan. Notable developers in Batu Kawan include Eco World Development Group Bhd, Aspen Group Bhd and Paramount Corp Bhd. Since the development of the Batu Kawan Industrial Park (BKIP), the area has attracted many international companies. Property consultants believe that Batu Kawan will continue to grow, thanks to population growth, the expanding industrial sector, and new property projects in the pipeline.

Sustainable finance is a rapidly evolving area that is now at the front and centre of priorities for financial institutions globally. Financial institutions cannot continue to lean on the repeated mantra of being on a journey as we enter 2022. To overcome the inertia, the industry needs to address three major challenges that are hindering progress on sustainable finance. Financial institutions need to educate ourselves better in terms of understanding — for instance, the importance of primary forests, peatlands, workplace safety, community empowerment as primary issues. Importantly, financial institutions need to empower and take lessons from local heroes working on the ground.

KUALA LUMPUR: LBS Bina Group Bhd ’s net profit for its fourth quarter ended Dec 31, 2021 rose to RM35.50mil from RM20.69mil in the previous corresponding period. This was driven by better performances from the group’s property development and construction and trading divisions. In a filing with Bursa Malaysia yesterday, LBS Bina said revenue in the fourth quarter grew to RM441.84mil from RM294.52mil a year earlier. For 2021, LBS Bina said its property development segment achieved higher revenue and pre-tax profit. Separately, LBS Bina said its construction and trading division achieved revenue and pre-tax profit of RM582mil and RM37mil, respectively, in 2021, as compared to a revenue of RM498mil and pre-tax profit of RM11mil in 2020.

PUTRAJAYA: An announcement on the reopening of the country’s borders would be made by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob, says Minister of Health Khairy Jamaluddin (pic). He said the government already had a suitable date for the reopening of the national borders. "The prime minister will announce the date, we already have a date and we will leave it to the prime minister to announce it," he said at a news conference on Covid-19 developments, here, on Thursday (Feb 24). Last Tuesday (Feb 22), National Recovery Council chairman, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin reportedly said that the Health Ministry was preparing and fine-tuning the standard operating procedure (SOP) pertaining to the reopening of the country’s borders. On another development, Khairy said the Health Ministry had received proposals from the Pharmaceutical Services Division to contribute (to other countries), Covid-19 vaccines which would expire after some months if they were not used.