Vaccination key to border reopening, recovery at Malaysia’s airports

LUMPUR: Vaccine availability and the pace of inoculation are key to the reopening of borders and the recovery of Malaysia’s airports, analysts observed.

In a report, the research team at TA Securities Holdings Bhd (TA Securities) said it is sanguine that Malaysia’s Covid19 cases will drop by 80 per cent once 36 per cent of the population has received first dose of vaccines.

“Having said that, this will depend heavily on vaccine availability and the pace of inoculation. According to government, Malaysia has ordered 66.7 million doses of vaccines from five vaccine developers, which are sufficient to cover the immunisation needs of about 70 per cent of Malaysians.

“However, with regards to the pace of inoculation, the Ministry of Health was targeting 70 to 80 per cent of Malaysians to register for the National Covid19 Immunisation programme, but thus far only 8.69 million or 35.8 per cent of population has registered as of April 14, 2021.

“We believe the citizens are taking the wait-and-see approach and will flock to vaccination centres once they see high preventive benefits with low side effect in Malaysia and the rest of the world.”

Meanwhile, it noted that for the first quarter of 2021 (1Q21), Malaysia total passenger movements declined 91 per cent to 1.7 million mainly due to border closures and movement control orders.

“However, we consider this as in line with our full-year growth forecast of 27.5 per cent as we expect the growth to normalise from Apr 2021 onwards after 12months of border closures.

“Also, we expect 4Q21 growth to be stronger as the interstate travel restrictions are expected to be lifted,” it said.

According to Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB) announcement, the overall aircraft movement declined by 63.2 per cent in March 2021.

“As a continuous effort to raise safety standards in curbing the Covid-19 pandemic, six airports (namely KLIA, Penang, Kota Kinabalu, Kuching, Langkawi and Subang Airport) are currently undergoing the Airport Health Accreditation (AHA) programme by the Airport Council International (ACI).

“Istanbul SGIA meanwhile, has already received the accreditation recently. The AHA is awarded based on health measures and procedures by the airports that are aligned with the industry’s best practices in particular with International Civil Aviation Organisation’s Restart Task Force guidelines.

“KLIA has also started disinfecting arriving baggage with the newly installed automatic ultraviolet disinfection system.

“This is one of the latest Airports 4.0 initiative expedited to ensure that airport safety remains at the highest level,” it noted.

All in, TA Securities retained its ‘buy’ recommendation on MAHB.