Check your facts first, Lo tells Chong

KUCHING: Deputy Minister of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Chong Chieng Jen should check his facts and not simply demonise his political foes, says Batu Kitang assemblyman Lo Khere Chiang

He said it was completely irresponsible and presumptuous of Chong to accuse leaders of Sarawak United People’s Party ( SUPP) of cheating people into buying the PR1MA houses.

He said the low demand for properties due to poor domestic consumptionhadforceddevelopers to lower prices and sell at a loss to prevent further losses. This was what happened to PR1MA houses that Chong mentioned a few days ago.

“Chong is trying to mislead the public into thinking that the previous BN government was making handsome profits from it. It is poor demand that forced PR1MA to sell at a loss, a discount of 28 per cent from their original price.

“I too welcome this reduction of 28 per cent by PR1MA housing because the discount comes from them ( PR1MA), a federal entity, while the buyers who benefit from the discount are all Sarawakians,” he said in a press statement received here yesterday.

Lo, who is a SUPP senior leader, said the fact of the case was that the economy had gone down after the 14th general election.

According to Bloomberg, Malaysia’s stock market is Asia’s only loser of 2019.

Lo said normally, “inflation takes place in a stable, robust and a growing economy; prices of goods and services inflate due to growing demand.

“Today, we see the development of an unwelcome economic scenario. Deflation! This is the fi rst time in many years that we have seen deflation in the market taking place.

“Prices of raw materials are still going up even as the ringgit weakens. The ringgit fell due to uncertainty of the new Pakatan Harapan ( PH) government,” he said.

Lo said the new government had given investors the jitters, so when more ringgit moved out of Malaysia, demand for ringgit dropped and the currency depreciated. The PH government had made things worse as it has refused to fulfill or has delayed election promises.

He said many U-turns and unfulfilled election promises by the PH government have forced investors to shy away from Malaysia and therefore the ringgit is not strengthening even though oil prices are now on the uptrend.

Lo also said Malaysia had spent billions of ringgit bailing out companies like MAS according to news reports from reputable sources like Malay Mail, Bloomberg and AsiaWeek.

He claimed that the Wall Street Journal reportedly alleged that the Perwaja steel bailout was perhaps one of the biggest bailouts in the 1990s.

“All these bailouts were done with money from Petronas, of which 30 per cent is Malaysia’s oil revenue from Sarawak.

“Sadly today, the new PH government is still bailing out MAS. How many times do we need to bail out MAS? Shouldn’t we just sell off MAS to the private sector and allow it to run MAS efficiently in order to make a profit?

“If not for the 30 per cent oil revenue siphoned from Sarawak to benefit Malaya, our lack of competitive edge would have brought the ringgit even further down,” he said.

Lo said an overall lack of confidence has seen international investors pulling out from the Malaysian market as reported by Bloomberg.

He said ever since GE 14, with the introduction of SST and the withdrawal of GST, public confidence appears to have gone down and investments may have flowed out from the country.

These are the most likely reasons for the downward trend of our property market.