ChinaDaily: Jabs Key to Malaysia's Tourism Revival

Last week, ChinaDaily published an interesting piece by Prime Sarmiento on how vaccinations are the key to reviving Malaysia’s struggling tourism industry. The article follows news that the government is mulling plans for a travel bubble to Langkawi, a quintessential tourism region, for fully vaccinated individuals (note: the bubble comes into effect on 16 Sep 2021). Several experts have voiced cautious optimism for this move since, as explained by People’s Health Forum’s Dr Micahel Jeyakumar Devaraj, it is now no longer possible to maintain a zero-case policy in the country.

Photo: The Langkawi Sky Bridge by Manish Tulaskar/Unsplashed. Known as the Jewel of the Kedah state, Langkawi is one of Malaysia’s wildly popular tourist destinations. In 2019, the archipelago recorded 3.92 million tourist arrivals, raking in an estimated revenue of RM1.7 billion (USD410 million) to nearly 5,000 businesses operating on the island. Approximately 70% of Langkawi’s residents are reported to rely on the tourism sector for income.

Deakin University’s Dr Catherine Bennet emphasised the need for vaccinations, explaining that restricting travel to only fully-vaccinated individuals would lower the risk of serious illnesses even in a case of infections. This would mean continuously pushing for more and more people to get the jab—Segi Enam Advisor’s Khor Yu Leng has pointed out that this may not be a significant issue for Malaysia considering that vaccine hesitancy is relatively low in the country.

BFM: Competency Needed in New Cabinet

Following his appointment as Malaysia’s Prime Minister, Ismail Sabri promises to announce his new Cabinet this week. As speculations abound on who will make it onto the administration line-up, one thing is for certain: competency from this new Cabinet is non-negotiable. Segi Enam Advisors principle, Khor Yu Leng, was on the BFM Morning Brief yesterday to join in on the discussion, including who the new Deputy Prime Minister might be and possible investor reaction: Competency Needed in New Cabinet

Khor Yu Leng, Political Economist at Segi Enam Advisors speculates how the new cabinet would look like and its size under Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri as Prime Minister. Would it be sizeable to appease all parties? And who might become Deputy Prime Minister(s)?

Image credit: Shutterstock.com; produced by: Arleen Webber; presented by: Shazana Mokhtar, Noelle Lim, Khoo Hsu Chuang

BTS of the BFM Morning Brief! Parti Warisan Sabah President Shafie Apdal joined the call for a brief moment in preparation for the next segment, Shafie: It Comes Down to Leadership.

SIIA Haze Outlook 2021: Issues to Watch in 2021

Continuing from previous posts on SIIA’s Haze Outlook 2021, of which Segi Enam was the co-authors, there are several relevant issues that bear watching in 2021.

On the meteorological front, Indonesia is expected to enter into its usual June–September dry season following a wet spell that was in large part caused by La Niña. Meteorological departments generally expected this dry season to either remain normal or drier than it was in 2020 but much less so than the droughts in 2015 and 2019. Both the Indian Ocean Dipole and El Niño-Southern Oscillation phenomena are forecasted to stay neutral throughout the third quarter of 2021. Overall, however, meteorologists warn that there are still some uncertainty in these forecasts, since it is difficult to make predictions during the transition seasons from April to May.

Given the favourable weather conditions, policy and human factors become decidedly important in the evaluating the risk of a severe transboundary haze. On one hand, the relevant policies in effect are sending a strong message of commitment to sustainability on the part of the Indonesian government, particularly in the areas of peatland and mangrove conservation, net zero emission goals, and haze prevention in the midst of the pandemic. On the other, there are concerns that the more recent policies, namely the Omnibus Law and food estate programme, would leave adverse environmental consequences.

Source: Segi Enam Advisors based on data from The World Bank (2021) for palm oil and rubber prices, GFW (2021) for tree cover loss and primary forest loss, KLHK (n.d.) and KLHK (2017) for official estimated burned area in 2015, 2019, and 2020.

That being said, there are other factors that bear watching. The Covid-19 pandemic is the most obvious; while it has presently not resulted in a severe haze incident despite the disruptions it has caused to fire management efforts, its impact in 2021 and beyond remains unclear. What the pandemic has caused is a near multi-year high in prices within the agricultural commodity market, which in turn raises the question of whether it would drive Indonesia growers to carry out land clearing and replanting activities.

Read the full report here: SIIA Haze Report 2021

SIIA Haze Outlook 2021: Reviewing 2020

Last week, the annual Haze Outlook 2021 was launched, a report on the recurring haze event in Southeast Asia authored by the Singapore Institute of International Affairs (SIIA) and Segi Enam Advisors. Part of the report reviewed the haze conditions—or lack thereof—in 2020.

While initial fears was that Southeast Asia would be battling both the Covid-19 pandemic and the annual transboundary haze simultaneously, no severe haze incident was recorded for in 2020. This was partly due to weather conditions within the region, i.e. a strong La Niña and a muted India Ocean Dipole phenomena resulted in one of the wettest year for Indonesia in the past decade, thereby dampening fire occurrences.

Consequently, much fewer hotspots were recorded in 2020 compared to 2019. The Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry (KLHK) reported that some 297,000 hectares of land were burned in 2020 compared to the 1.6 million hectares in 2019.

Data: Hotspot imagery from NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management Systems (FIRMS, https://earthdata.nasa.gov/firms), peatlands from Jiren et al. (2019), and Khor Reports estimates. Source: Segi Enam Advisors (2021).

Nonetheless, the outbreak of the coronavirus has had some effect on the Indonesian fire prevention landscape. For one, the pandemic appeared to have somewhat hindered replanting activities in the agricultural sector, although businesses and experts have indicated that this was more apparent in rural areas compared to urban centres. On the other hand, Covid-19 has adversely impacted Indonesia’s fire fighting and prevention capabilities: initiatives such as outreach programmes with fire-prone villages and corporate fire management efforts were scaled back and government resources had to be redirected to manage the pandemic.

Read the full report here: SIIA Haze Report 2021

Covid-19 and the Johorean Property Market

As the pandemic drags on, one obvious victim is real estate. Market outlook in 2020 have been unsurprisingly bleak, although experts have expressed cautious optimism for 2021 as some aspects within the sector gradually improve. Still, it would seem a relatively long way off until a more significant recovery occurs, as owners of property in Johor Bahru would tell you.

Channel News Asia’s Amir Yusof wrote an interesting piece on how the residential property market has been hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. According to a report by property consultancy firm Henry Butcher, Johor contributed 20% of overhang residential properties in Malaysia in 2019, making it the state with the highest proportion of unsold residential property even before the outbreak of the coronavirus. Segi Enam Advisors principal, Khor Yu Leng, contributed her opinion on the matter, explaining that:

“The spending power of the former Johor daily commuters and Singapore residents who visited Johor weekly or otherwise has diminished or disappeared from the Johor economy… A year later, with Johor’s economic umbilical still cut off from Singapore, and Malaysia suffering a big wave of COVID-19, informal social support activities (to help the lower-income households) have been ongoing.” 

Head over here to read the entire article: How Johor’s residential property market has been hit hard by COVID-19

Prepare for Trouble, Make it Double: Anger in Malaysia after Double Standards by Government

In the past two weeks, Malaysians have taken to the social media to vent their frustrations over the handling of the surge of COVID-19. Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin who had built his legitimacy on his swift tackling of the COVID-19 earlier this year saw his popular streak came to a grinding halt. Public sentiment turned against him in what they perceived as double-standard when his cabinet members were not subjected to quarantine upon returning from campaigning from Sabah.

Khor Reports’ PolTracker team took this opportunity to analyse how selected hashtags are trending on Twitter. Head over here to read our results of this analysis.