Oil palm planters face rising cost

Oil palm planters face rising cost
Biztimes Tuesday, March 23, 2010, 09.45 AM

OIL palm plantation owners in Sabah face increasing cost of doing business due to the slow trunk road upgrade between major towns and labour shortage. Many oil palm planters have long suffered from congestion and slow transport of oil to the ports for shipment as well as shortage of labour to harvest fruit bunches.

"The government should speed up upgrading of trunk roads here to handle heavy loads of produce. We now face congestion problems," said Kam Cheong Plantations Sdn Bhd director Cheong Sung Yan. He is also the Incorporated Society of Planters (ISP) Sabah's northeast branch chairman. "Don't forget that Sabah produces about a third of Malaysia's palm oil exports. The trunk road is congested and the road system is bad," he told Business Times on the sidelines of a workshop organised by the Malaysian Palm Oil Council and ISP in Sandakan yesterday.

Cheong lamented that oil palm plantation owners in Sabah pay cess to the Malaysian Palm Oil Board, income and corporate tax to the Finance Ministry, workers' levy to the Home Ministry and 7.5 per cent sales tax to the Sabah government. "We pay so much tax to the government, (but) what do we get in return? We hear announcements that hundreds of million ringgit had been allocated to build and upgrade roads here but ... until today, implementation remains to be seen," Cheong said.

Two months ago, the Rural and Regional Development Ministry had said that it will spend about RM2.1 billion to provide rural basic infrastructures in Sabah and Sarawak under the National Key Result Areas (NKRA) this year. Its minister Datuk Seri Mohd Shafie Apdal had said the allocation also involved the completion of last year's projects to build new roads nd provide water and electricity supply. Of the total, about RM928 million would be allocated to Sabah.

For NKRA's rural road projects, Sabah was allocated RM134.9 million to complete 40 of last year's projects and another RM56.8 million to implement 36 new roads. On labour shortage, Cheong said the government's frequent change in the method of foreign labour application is burdening oil palm planters.

"(Of course) if we can help it, we want to be on the safe side of the law. But to legalise foreign labour, we need to approach five or six government agencies and it costs us RM2,000 per worker. That works out to RM2 million to legalise 1,000 workers," he said.

While oil palm planters support the government policy to employ more locals and enhance mechanised harvesting on the estates, the reality is far from expectations. Cheong said that young locals entering the labour market are just not interested in menial jobs like harvesting of oil palm fruits. "This has been a long recurring problem that oil palm planters here face. We want to see the government eliminate red tape in the application for foreign labour because it is adding unnecessary cost to doing business," he said.
 
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Kedah’s Great Hydrocarbon Hope

Kedah’s Great Hydrocarbon Hope

ALOR STAR, March 19 — Kedah has had its share of grand “vision” plans, thought up by a succession of ambitious mentris besar, to turn its modest economy into a regional powerhouse to rival Penang’s.

Those plans and the politicians who dreamed them up are gone and forgotten. However, the promises of those plans, of providing better jobs and a better standard of living, still light up the eyes of most Kedahans.
This time, there is no grand plan but a massive fuel processing and refinery project in Yan district that could transform the landscape and lives of tens of thousands of people in one of the state’s major rice-growing areas.

Part of the project involves building a two-train refinery that will sit on a 340 ha plot of reclaimed land on the coast near Sungai Limau, a tiny town surrounded by huge swaths of verdant padi fields. It is being called the Sungai Limau Hydrocarbon Hub (Sulih).

 

The other part, which is currently on hold, is building a 300km oil pipeline that will snake through Kedah, northern Perak over the Titiwangsa main range to Bachok, Kelantan. It could potentially bring in RM200 million a year for the Kedah government and create up to 3,000 new jobs.

It is not just the scale of the project that has people excited and some worried. Once completed, the refinery would turn what is now a rice bowl area, into a heavy industrial zone. The residents of Sungai Limau, especially those who will live in the shadow of the refinery, are now contemplating the hard adjustments that they will have to make. They will have to make the transition from their now sedate kampung existence to the hurly-burly of city life.

More importantly, they are worried that they will not see a sen from the millions in spin-off revenue from the food outlets, shops and smaller industries that will mushroom around Yan.

Read more >>.

*p/s This much needed investors are greatly excites most Kedahan and shall be helping locals improving their economy and state coffers.

Labour woes hit palm oil

MPOB: Malaysia may miss target of 18.1 million tonnes for this year.
BizOnline. Thursday March 4, 2010

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia, the world’s No. 2 palm oil producer, will miss its output target of 18.1 million tonnes because of a shortage of foreign labour even as yields recover, according to a top industry official.

Industry regulator Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) chairman Sabri Ahmad said yesterday Indonesian plantation workers made better pay at home as more palm oil estates started up there while employers in Malaysia had trouble hiring because of a stricter work-permit process.

Sabri added that while concerns about hot weather caused by the El Nino weather phenomenon weighed on the industry, labour was the main issue now. “The hot weather from El Nino is not the problem now because its effect can be seen 12-18 months later.

“The bigger issue is the labour shortage and if that is resolved, then 18.1 million tonnes is possible,” Sabri Ahmad told Reuters ahead of the Bursa Malaysia Palm Oil Conference next week.

“Historically, Malaysian palm oil output should not be weak for two straight years. Sarawak should contribute to production. We just don’t have enough labour,” he said

Read More Here.

RM120,000 lost to scam

RM120,000 lost to scam
The NST online 2010/03/03

NUSAJAYA: A 22-year-old woman has fallen prey to an online scam that caused her to lose RM120,000.

The victim is a clerk from Sungai Renggit, Kota Tinggi. She received an email from an unknown sender last Wednesday stating that she won STG800,000 (RM4.06 million) from the United Kingdom National Lottery.
State police chief Datuk Mohd Mokhtar Mohd Shariff said the email sender persuaded the clerk to deposit money into six accounts in a local bank in order to redeem her prize money.

She did so before realising she had been cheated. Mokhtar said the sender, in persuading her, gave several reasons including obtaining a lottery certificate from the UK National Lottery and to settle a customs-related case involving another person who was delivering the prize money from UK.

Read more >> click to the link above...

Rules That Warren Buffett Lives By

Rules That Warren Buffett Lives By

Warren Buffett is arguably the world's greatest stock investor. He's also a bit of a philosopher. He pares down his investment ideas into simple, memorable sound bites. Do you know what his homespun sayings really mean? Does his philosophy hold up in today's difficult environment?

Find out below.

"Rule No. 1: Never Lose Money. Rule No. 2: Never Forget Rule No. 1."

"If The Business Does Well, the Stock Eventually Follows"

"It's Far Better to Buy a Wonderful Company at a Fair Price Than a Fair Company at a Wonderful Price"

"Our Favorite Holding Period Is Forever"

Read more here >>Yahoo Finance by Stephanie Loiacono Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Flying High On Taxpayers' Money

Flying High On Taxpayers' Money
http://203.115.192.117/monday/mon_page11.html

THE antics of officials of the Wives of Elected Representatives in Selangor (Balkis) story made headlines on April 25, 2009 when theSun reported:

“Three days after their husbands lost power to rule Selangor, the wives got into the act – plotting to dissolve a welfare body and remove almost RM10 million from its bank accounts.” Three days later, we exposed yet other wrongdoings.

We wrote: “While their husbands went on ‘lawatan sambil belajar’, the wives were not to be outdone. Shopping trips, overseas junkets and lavish functions have been the hallmark of activities of Balkis. Nothing wrong with the junkets, except that their excesses were paid for by the state government and private donors, who contributed money thinking that it was going to good causes.

In the eight years that  Khir Toyo has been mentri besar, (his wife) Zaharah Kechik, who headed Balkis, has led delegations on trips to Europe, Hongkong and Australia.”

Read more >> http://203.115.192.117/monday/mon_page11.html