Aset-aset komersil PKNS akan dipindah milik

Aset-aset komersil Perbadanan Kemajuan Negeri Selangor (PKNS), akan dipindah milik kepada anak syarikat milik penuhnya, Private Real Estate Company (PREC), bagi meningkatkan lagi tahap kecekapan pengurusan aset supaya lebih berkesan.

PKNS dalam satu kenyataan hari ini menyatakan aset-aset komersil itu ialah Kompleks PKNS, Shah Alam; Kompleks PKNS, Bangi; SACC Mall, Shah Alam; Wisma Yakin, Kuala Lumpur dan Menara PKNS, Petaling Jaya.

"Salah satu inisiatif korporat yang dilaksanakan oleh PKNS ialah menerusi pelaburan dan pengurusan hartanah secara lebih efektif dan efisyen.

"Sejak tahun 2008, sebanyak 82 peratus daripada para peniaga yang menyewa ruang niaga di aset-aset milik PKNS terdiri daripada usahawan Melayu dan Bumiputera," kata PKNS.

Ia berkata kerja-kerja penambahbaikan kemudahan di dalam bangunan seperti tandas, eskalator, lif, papan tanda, tempat letak kereta dan lain-lain yang telah dijalankan sejak Oktober 2011, dijangka siap pada Mac 2013.

PREC akan menaik taraf bangunan secara berterusan bagi meningkatkan nilai aset-aset tersebut.

Kiosk-kiosk perniagaan baharu juga akan turut diwujudkan untuk disewakan kepada peniaga Melayu dan Bumiputera, khususnya.

PREC dengan kerjasama Bahagian Pembangunan Usahawan PKNS juga akan menambah ruang-ruang tapak niaga di aset-aset ini bagi usahawan Melayu dan Bumiputera menjual produk keluaran masing-masing.

Sejak tahun 2008, lebih daripada 6,000 usahawan Bumiputera memperoleh manfaat menerusi program pembangunan usahawan PKNS.

'Banyak MP Pakatan cuma tunjuk muka dalam parlimen'

Sekalipun Pakatan Rakyat menambah suara Melayu dalam parlimen, tidak semua mereka yang mampu berhujah dalam perbahasan dalam Dewan Rakyat, kata Pengerusi Perhubungan Umno Kelantan Datuk Seri Mustapha Mohamed.

"Memang banyak orang Melayu dalam Pakatan ini berbanding kami (Umno) tetapi kebanyakannya mereka ini, hanya tunjuk muka.

"Mereka diakui mempunyai banyak pemimpin Melayu, namun banyak sahaja pun tidak guna kalau tidak bersuara," katanya..

Beliau yang juga ahli majlis tertinggi Umno turut menafikan kekurangan ahli parlimen dari parti itu selepas pilihan raya umum ke-12 tidak menunjukkan parti itu kurang lantang dalam menyuarakan hak orang Melayu di Parlimen.

Menurutnya yang juga menteri perdagangan antarabangsa dan industri, Umno adalah parti utama yang sering membela nasib orang Melayu sejak dahulu lagi.

Mustapha yang juga ahli parlimen Jeli mengulas dakwaan Timbalan Presiden PAS Mohamad Sabu bahawa kemenangan Pakatan pada pilihan raya umum lalu adalah bukti kemampuan menambah suara orang Melayu dalam Parlimen berbanding BN.

Akhbar itu turut melaporkan pakar Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) Dr Azmi Hassan sebagai berkata kemenangan calon Melayu dalam Pakatan tidak boleh dinilai daripada aspek kualiti kerana kebanyakan calon pembangkang didakwa hanya "bidan terjun".

"Bagi saya ini hanya permainan statistik, bukan keupayaan sebenar calon Pakatan... Saya melihat, pemilihan calon Melayu dalam Pakatan juga agak tempang hingga menyebabkan kredibiliti Pakatan terjejas.

"Kualiti ahli parlimen Melayu dalam Pakatan amat rendah kerana mereka tidak boleh memimpin, apa lagi untuk memperjuangkan hak-hak orang Melayu," katany.

G.O.P. Turns Fire on Obama Pillar, the Auto Bailout

 
TOLEDO, Ohio — The ad from Mitt Romney showed up on televisions here early Saturday morning without the usual public announcement that both campaigns typically use to herald their latest commercials:  Chrysler a bailout recipient, is going to begin producing Jeeps in China, an announcer says, leaving the misleading impression that the move would come at the expense of jobs here.

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And so began the latest, and perhaps most important, attempt by Mitt Romney to wrest Ohio into his column. His effort to do so is now intently focused, at times including statements that stretch or ignore the facts, on knocking down what is perhaps the most important component of President Obama`s appeal to blue-collar voters in Ohio and across the industrial Midwest: the success of the president’s 2009 auto bailout.  

Mr. Obama’s relatively strong standing in most polls in Ohio so far has been attributed by members of both parties to the recovery of the auto industry, which has helped the economy here outperform the national economy. At the same time, the industry’s performance and the president’s claim to credit for it appear to have helped Mr. Obama among the white working-class voters Mr. Romney needs.

With the race under most expected circumstances coming down to Ohio, and Ohio potentially coming down to perceptions of how the candidates view the auto industry, Mr. Romney has spent the last few days aggressively trying to undercut Mr. Obama’s auto bailout narrative.

In the past few days his running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, has accused Mr. Obama of allowing the bailout to bypass nonunion workers at Delphi, a big auto parts maker with operations in Ohio; Mr. Romney has characterized Mr. Obama’s bailout plan as based on his approach; and Mr. Romney incorrectly told a rally in Defiance, Ohio, late last week outright that Jeep was considering moving its production to China. (Jeep is discussing increasing production in China for sales within China; it is not moving jobs out of Ohio or the United States, or building cars in China for export to the United States.)

It is a high-risk strategy: Jeep’s corporate parent, Chrysler, had already released a scathing statement calling suggestions that Jeep was moving American jobs to China “fantasies” and “extravagant”; news media outlets here and nationally have called the Romney campaign’s statements — initially based on a poorly worded quotation from Chrysler in a news article that was misinterpreted by blogs — misleading.

Mr. Obama’s campaign, seeking to maintain what it sees as its advantage in Ohio, responded on Monday by releasing a commercial calling Mr. Romney’s ad false and reiterating that Mr. Romney had opposed the bailout on the terms supported by Mr. Obama. And on Sunday it dispatched the investment banker who helped develop the bailout, Steven Rattner, here to discuss Jeep’s plans and the auto rescue with local news organizations.

Democrats are hoping that Mr. Romney’s latest move will draw a backlash in a city so dependent on Jeep, which has announced plans to add 1,100 jobs to an assembly plant here that is currently being refitted for the next iteration of what is now called the Jeep Liberty.

Bruce Baumhower, the president of the United Auto Workers local that oversees the major Jeep plant here, said Mr. Romney’s initial comments on moving production to China drew a rash of calls from members concerned about their jobs. When he informed them Chrysler was, in fact, is expanding its Jeep operation here, he said in an interview, “The response has been, ‘That’s pretty pitiful.’ ”

The fight over the auto bailout shows the enduring power of the issue but also its complexities in a campaign that is about both the strength of the economy and the size and role of government.

The auto bailout was one of the first major moves of Mr. Obama’s presidency, and gave Mr. Romney an early chance in opposing it to prove his conservative credentials.

Mr. Romney has portrayed himself as an automobile maven. As he frequently says in his stump speeches, his father was credited with keeping American Motors in business during the 1950s and early 1960s. (The company, it happens, owned Jeep from 1970 to 1987.)

Just as the incoming Obama administration was beginning to contemplate a bailout, Mr. Romney wrote an Op-Ed article in the The New York Times — given the title by the newspaper “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.’’ In the piece Mr. Romney wrote that in the event of a bailout, “You can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye.”

The plan the administration settled on first helped Fiat buy Chrysler and then put both Chrysler and General Motors into managed bankruptcies as part of a program that brought total government assistance for Detroit to almost $80 billion between the Obama and Bush administrations. Coming as the Tea Party  was beginning to form, it seemed like risky politics for Democrats being accused of taking big government to an extreme.

At the third and last debate last week in Boca Raton, Fla., Mr. Romney emphasized his position that “these companies need to go through a managed bankruptcy, and in that process they can get government help and government guarantees.”

Mr. Romney has stepped up his offense on the issue since.

So it was that he told those at the exuberant rally on Thursday in Defiance, “I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China.”

Mr. Romney was apparently referring to a Bloomberg News article that said Jeep would return to manufacturing in China that had been misinterpreted by several conservative blogs to mean Jeep was shifting its production to China; the company made clear in a statement that Chrysler was only resuming production in China for Chinese consumers, which it had done for years before halting in 2009 before its sale to Fiat.

Mr. Romney’s ad treads carefully, with an announcer saying Mr. Obama “sold Jeep to the Italians, who are going to build Jeeps in China” and the screen flashing, “Plans to return Jeep output to China.”

Calling it “blatant attempt to create a false impression,” former Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio, a Democrat, demanded Mr. Romney take it down on Monday. Stuart Stevens, a senior Romney adviser, disputed that the ad is misleading.

“Right now every Jeep built is built in America by an American and sold to the world,” he said. “Now instead of adding jobs in Toledo, they will be making Jeeps in China by the Chinese and selling them in China.”

Jeep began a joint manufacturing venture in China in 1984 and today makes some vehicles in Egypt and Venezuela. While it does produce cars for Chinese export here now, it has discussed returning some production to China since last year.

Data Show Weakening in Euro Zone Economy

Sovereing debt cricis and unrelenting pressure for government austerity.

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The data comes in a week when euro zone finance ministers are due to confer by telephone about further aid to the faltering Greek economy, and heads of the major global economic agencies are holding meetings with the leaders of France and Germany.

Spain’s gross domestic product contracted by 0.3 percent in the third quarter from the second quarter, the National Statistics Institute reported from Madrid.

The Spanish economy has now contracted for four consecutive quarters. A collapse real estate prices after the 2008 financial crisis and austerity measures to balance the public sector budget have inflicted severe pain on the country, driving unemployment to 25 percent.

In Nuremberg, the Federal Labor Agency said the number of Germans without jobs rose in 20,000 after seasonal adjustment, leaving the unemployment rate at 6.9 percent, unchanged from September.

“The weaker economic development is making itself noticeable in the labor market,” Frank-Jürgen Weise, director of the German Federal Employment Agency, told a press conference in Nuremberg. But he added that “overall, the labor market is showing itself to be robust and in fine condition.”

Eckart Tuchtfeld, an economist with Commerzbank in Frankfurt, noted that, perhaps more worryingly, the number of employed fell in September for the first time since early 2010.

“The ‘labor market miracle’ many observers had proclaimed is likely to continue taking a breather for now, in view of the poor economy,” Mr. Tuchtfeld wrote. “Only in the second half of 2013 do we expect the trend to point up again.”

The Spanish and German gloom were underscored by a repor from the European Commission which said in Brussels that its index of business and consumer sentiment fell 0.7 point to 84.5 this month from a revised 85.2 points in September.

An index value below 100 shows more respondents are pessimistic than optimistic.

“Marked decreases” in sentiment in the euro zone’s industrial and construction sectors outweighed improvement in retail, though service sector and consumer confidence were stable, the commission, said, though it noted a hopeful sign in that the rate of decline in the indexes was slowing.

Sentiment in the 27-nation European Union was “broadly stable,” the commission said.

The decline in sentiment shows the 17-nation euro zone began the fourth quarter “on a very weak note,” Jennifer McKeown, an economist in London with Capital Economics, wrote in a note. She said the sentiment data were “consistent with annual contractions in euro-zone G.D.P. of around 2.5 percent. That implies very steep quarterly falls in G.D.P. in the next few quarters.”

She also predicted the euro zone economy would shrink by about 2.5 percent next year.

More than three years after Greece’s disclosure that it had been fudging its government finance statistics, touching off a run on the sovereign debt of several euro zone governments, the region’s crisis has become a grinding, chronic affair.

Chancellor Angela Merkel will hold talks in Berlin on Tuesday with the leaders of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and the International Labor Organization.

The leaders were arriving in Berlin from Paris, where they held talks with the French president, François Hollande.

The meeting comes ahead of the latest report on Greece’s financial situation by the so-called troika of international lenders: the I.M.F., the European Central Bank and the European Commission. Germany has made the troika report a precondition for making any decisions on further assistance to Athens.

Nevertheless, discussion over how Germany might best help Greece to cover its growing financing gap has gathered speed in recent days. While the idea that Greece might need more time to pay back its debts remains open for debate among German lawmakers, both the chancellor and her finance minister have rejected the idea of a taking a loss on official loans to Greece.

Ms. Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, told reporters on Monday that a write-off of Greece’s public sector debts was “out of the question.” He cited German law as stipulating that loans can only be granted to countries that are not considered in threat of default, meaning that such a write-down “would certainly not be in Greece’s interests.”

Bank of Japan Announces Fresh Economic Stimulus

TOKYO — The Japanese central bank announced fresh measures on Tuesday to ease monetary policy, stepping up its bid to fend off recession in the world’s third-largest economy after the United States and China.

The Bank of Japan, under pressure from the government to act more decisively to halt the economy’s slide, said in a statement that it would add ¥11 trillion, or $138.5 billion, to an asset-buying program that has become its main monetary policy tool.

The bank will also set up a new loan program to supply banks with cheap long-term funds, a bid to pump more money into the Japanese economy to encourage growth. As expected, the bank decided to keep its benchmark interest rate at a range of 0 percent to 0.1 percent.

The Bank of Japan’s governor, Masaaki Shirakawa, said that the easing measures would stay in place until Japan achieved an inflation level of at least 1 percent.

The measures come as Japan confronts economic data that suggest its fragile recovery is threatened. The economy grew at a healthy clip earlier this year, helped by the huge reconstruction effort that followed the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. But a slowdown in exports and industrial output, brought about by the global slowdown and a continued territorial spat with China, a major trading partner, is threatening to hobble that growth.

The dispute, which intensified in September, has led to boycotts of Japanese brands among Chinese consumers, forcing Japanese exporters to scale back their sales forecasts in an important market.

Meanwhile, Japanese industrial output fell by 4.1 percent in September from August, and by 8.1 percent from a year earlier, data released Tuesday showed. Exports have also shown signs of a slowdown, and price data show the economy remains mired in deflation, a damaging drop in prices, wages and profit that hampers economic activity.

Reflecting those risks, the central bank cut its own economic and price forecasts, saying it was unlikely to meet a goal of reaching 1 percent inflation by the fiscal year ending March 2014. That probably will not happen until the following year, the bank said.

“Japan’s economy is expected to level off more or less for the time being. Thereafter, however, as domestic demand remains resilient on the whole and overseas economies gradually emerge from the deceleration phase, the economy is expected to return to a moderate recovery path,” the bank said in its semiannual economic outlook, also released Tuesday.

And in a rare joint statement, the government and the Bank of Japan said they shared the goal of beating deflation. The central bank will “regularly” report its outlook on prices to the cabinet, while the government will introduce its own measures to fight deflation, the statement said.

Mr. Shirakawa said that for now, he saw increased risks for a marked slowdown in the global economy. The biggest change since the bank’s policy meeting in September, he said, was that “overseas economies seemed to be slowing down further.” That was “a big starting point” of the bank’s policy discussions, he said.

It is still unclear how far the bank will go to reverse Japan’s decade-long deflationary malaise, made worse by the country’s shrinking population. Central bankers have said that monetary policy is not enough to ease the economic problems and that the government needs to do more to facilitate growth.

Even as the central bank has flooded the economy with money, bank lending has hardly risen because companies do not feel confident enough in the weak economy to fund big investments.

The government has also thrown money at the economy, approving ¥422.6 billion in emergency spending just last week. But its ability to spend its way to economic growth is limited by a public debt burden already twice the size of its economy. Gridlock in Parliament is also blocking a bill that would allow the government to fund an almost ¥40 trillion deficit, threatening public services.

Markets were unimpressed with the central bank’s moves Tuesday, with the Nikkei 225-share index in Tokyo closing down nearly 1 percent shortly after the bank’s announcement, and the Hang Seng index in Hong Kong off 0.4 percent. The yen strengthened, hitting a one-week high of 79.25 to the dollar, bringing more pain to Japanese exporters.

“Monetary fireworks displays are not in Bank of Japan governor Shirakawa’s nature,” Nicholas Smith, Japan strategist at CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, said in a note to clients after the bank’s decision. The bank will continue to face pressure from the government to step up its actions, and Mr. Shirakawa may be replaced when his current term ends in April, Mr. Smith said. “And if there is one thing that all major political parties can agree on, it is that the monetary future must be expansionary,” he said.