Putrajaya to slash power tariffs amid oil price plunge |
- Putrajaya to slash power tariffs amid oil price plunge
- At least 19 Ukraine troops killed in 24 hours, says official
- Please, Europe, for your own benefit, meet Greece halfway — Clive Crook and Michael Newman
- Filipino nurse from Saudi Arabia tests positive for MERS virus
- Boost to Asian oil refining margins likely to fade — Clyde Russell
- Laweyer says former Thai PM Yingluck’s escape rumour untrue
| Putrajaya to slash power tariffs amid oil price plunge Posted: 11 Feb 2015 12:28 AM PST
The energy, green technology and water minister said the tariff would be cut by 2.25 sen or 5.8 per cent for Peninsula Malaysia, while power rates will go down by 1.20 sen or 3.5 per cent in Sabah and the Federal Territory of Labuan. The new rates will mean consumers in the peninsula will end up paying 36.28 sen per kilowatt-hour (kWh) once in effect, while users in Sabah and Labuan will pay 33.32 per kWh. Maximus said the national energy company managed to save a total of RM726.99 million from lower fuel costs, allowing lower tariffs for consumers. Sarawak, meanwhile, will not reduce its power rates as the industry there does not fall under the ministry's jurisdiction, he added. MORE TO COME  |
| At least 19 Ukraine troops killed in 24 hours, says official Posted: 11 Feb 2015 12:26 AM PST
"Nineteen soldiers were killed in the last 24 hours and 78 wounded," military spokesman Vladyslav Seleznyov told journalists in Kiev, after officials had already announced the death of five troops in yesterday's attack on Kramatorsk. — AFP |
| Please, Europe, for your own benefit, meet Greece halfway — Clive Crook and Michael Newman Posted: 11 Feb 2015 12:20 AM PST FEBRUARY 11 — Tonight Greece's new finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, is scheduled to make a proposal to his European Union counterparts. The importance of this negotiation would be hard to exaggerate: At stake is the future of the euro system. The details of Greece's new offer on fiscal policy and debt will matter — but not as much as a willingness on both sides to come to terms. So far, there's been too little sign of that. Greece and the rest of the EU have been talking as though Greece's exit from the euro system was an option they were willing to consider. That is a reckless message to send to investors. Varoufakis continues to insist that Greece cannot and will not abide by the terms of the bailout programme agreed to by the previous Greek government. When the programme expires at the end of this month, Greece will refuse to extend it. Varoufakis wants a bridge loan while talks take place on the consolidation of Greece's enormous external debts. So far, the rest of the euro area has said, "No way." Greece's fiscal odyssey Greece's initial position deserved a stone-faced response because it seemed to allow for no compromise: Greece's debts would have to be partly written off, whether Europe liked it or not. But on his tour of EU capitals last week, Varoufakis climbed a long way down from that. He now says Greece wants not outright forgiveness but further debt restructuring, including a swap into debts with repayment linked to growth rates. Rather than refusing to have policy conditions tied to the new deal, he's indicating that many of the reforms bundled into the existing bailout programme will stay in place, together with some new ones. These proposals aren't as bad as the initial pitch would have led you to expect. Actually, they make a lot of sense. The existing bailout programme is widely recognised to have failed: It imposed too much austerity, flattened the economy and, as a result, failed to get the ratio of debt to national income under control. Right or wrong, Greece's modified position should be seen, at the very least, as a basis for negotiation. Yet some EU governments, and Germany's especially, are refusing to budge. There's nothing to talk about, they say. Yesterday, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble ominously pronounced that if Greece doesn't want the final tranche of the bailout programme, "it's over." Greece's creditors "can't negotiate about something new," he added. Why on earth not? Missed targets, failed programmes and renegotiated agreements aren't exactly unheard of in the EU: A cynic might call that sequence standard operating procedure. It seems perverse bordering on deranged to try to break this habit at the very moment when a sudden commitment to unwavering rigidity threatens the survival of the euro system. Taken at his word, Schaeuble is telling Greece that nothing short of unconditional surrender will do. What are Greek voters, rallying behind their new government, to make of that? If Greece declines Germany's offer of national humiliation, and the other EU governments follow through on Schaeuble's threat, Greece will have no recourse but to default and, in all likelihood, to impose capital controls as a prelude to exit from the euro system. EU creditors will be worse off than if they'd come to an accommodation — and possibly much worse off, if the collateral damage from a Greek exit can't be contained. Greece has given some ground. Perhaps it needs to give some more. But it has shed its initial ill-advised aggression and is asking to make a deal. The EU needs to respond. If it refuses to, and the euro system fails as a result, it will have some explaining to do. — Bloomberg View *This is the personal opinion of the columnist. |
| Filipino nurse from Saudi Arabia tests positive for MERS virus Posted: 11 Feb 2015 12:17 AM PST
The World Health Organization is worried about the spread of MERS, a respiratory disease known to have infected at least 965 people, of whom some 357 have died, overwhelmingly in Saudi Arabia. Lyndon Lee Suy, a spokesman for the Department of Health, said the female nurse was undergoing treatment at the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine. "The nurse had bouts of fever, body pain, cough and difficulty in breathing - symptoms similar to a patient with MERS-CoV," he told a news conference. "Testing was done which yielded positive results. The patient is in stable condition." Lee Suy said health authorities were conducting a contact tracing for 225 other passengers on board Saudi Airlines Flight 860. Her husband, who also arrived on the same flight on February 1, tested negative. First reported in 2012 in Saudi Arabia, about 30 per cent of people confirmed to have caught the viral respiratory illness MERS-CoV have died. Nine countries in the Middle East have had confirmed cases while 13 other states, now including the Philippines, have had travel-associated cases, or cases that they have diagnosed but which originated overseas. — Reuters |
| Boost to Asian oil refining margins likely to fade — Clyde Russell Posted: 11 Feb 2015 12:16 AM PST FEBRUARY 11 — One of the persistent themes in the letter pages of my local newspaper is why, if crude oil prices have halved in the past eight months, am I still paying so much for petrol to fill my car? The writers invariably see some conspiracy involving price-gouging by fuel retailers, refiners and the government, and want somebody, anybody, to take action to end the injustice. As with all good conspiracy theories there is an element of truth in some of the allegations, even if they are nowhere near as sinister as the letter writers imagine. There a few broad trends that can be identified, and they aren't unique to Australia, affecting many countries across Asia. Retail fuel prices haven't fallen by nearly as much as crude oil prices, and for a variety of reasons that vary from country to country. One of the common themes in Asia has been governments finally doing the right thing and using the 50 per cent plunge in Brent crude since last June to get rid of fuel subsidies. In some cases, such as China and India, the authorities have been raising fuel taxes as well, partly to raise revenue but also to prevent demand from blowing out. However, the main factor at work hasn't been government intervention in fuel markets, rather it has been that Asia's refiners have been rebuilding margins after years of low profits amid relative high crude prices. Australia shows this phenomenon at work, given that there has been only a tiny change to government taxes, amounting to half an Australian cent (0.4 US cent) per litre in the past year. The retail price of gasoline, called petrol in Australia, has fallen about 25 per cent since peaking around the middle of last year, while Brent has dropped by about 42 per cent in Australian dollar terms. If the excise of 38.6 Australian cents a litre is removed from the calculation, the non-tax component of the retail price has declined by about 33 per cent, still short of the decline in oil prices. By way of comparison, retail gasoline prices have dropped 29 per cent in local currency terms in China from their recent peak in June 2014, while those in India have fallen 23 per cent since last July. However, over the same period the margin from processing a barrel of regional benchmark Dubai crude oil at a typical refinery in Singapore has almost doubled, according to Reuters data. Refiners were making US$8.80 (RM31.67) a barrel as of yesterday, up from an average of US$4.84 in June last year, when Brent reached its recent peak above US$115. This fits the longer-term trend of refiners rebuilding margins when crude prices fall, but squeezing them during times of higher oil costs. Good times ending? The problem for refiners is this may be as good as it gets, assuming that crude prices don't continue to drop, rather they stabilise around current levels and then trade in a US$20 a barrel range for the foreseeable future. Part of the reason refiners have been able to rebuild margins in recent months is because demand has picked up, even though retail fuel prices haven't fully reflected crude's plunge. China's gasoline demand has increased far more rapidly than its diesel consumption, as the former is more related to consumers and the latter to industry. Gasoline output rose 14 per cent in December from the year earlier month and by 12.3 per cent over the whole of 2014, according to official figures. On the other hand, diesel output only gained 2.4 per cent in 2014, showing that lower retail prices have encouraged consumers to drive more, or buy less economical vehicles, or both. However, it's likely that the strength in refinery margins will lead to higher output of fuels across the region, as refineries return from annual maintenance and spare capacity is put to use. New refineries will also add to the amount of product, with Saudi Arabia's 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) Yasref plant starting to load cargoes this month, and Abu Dhabi's expanded Ruwais refinery starting output at its new units. China's refining capacity reached about 14 million bpd by the end of last year, and could expand by another 360,000 bpd this year. With no shortage of spare refinery capacity in China and at export-orientated facilities in the Middle East, it's likely that margins will once again start to compress from the second quarter onwards. — Reuters *This is the personal opinion of the columnist. |
| Laweyer says former Thai PM Yingluck’s escape rumour untrue Posted: 10 Feb 2015 11:51 PM PST
Yingluck became Thailand's first female prime minister in July 2011 but was removed from office days before a May 2014 coup led by then-army chief Prayuth Chan-ocha. That followed months of street protests in Bangkok against her government. Last month, she was banned from politics for five years over her role in a state rice-buying scheme, which had won her many voters in the rural heartland but which cost Thailand billions of dollars in losses. Yingluck, the sister of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, was also indicted on criminal charges over the scheme, charges her supporters say were aimed at crippling her powerful family's political influence. Thailand's attorney-general will submit a subpoena to the Supreme Court on February 19 and wants Yingluck to be present. Her lawyer, Norawit Laleng, said Yingluck was planning to fight the charges in person even though Thai law does not stipulate that she needs to present for the subpoena. Rumours that Yingluck would flee were being spread by her critics to jolt the military into action, Norawit told Reuters. "If she had a plan to flee she would not have publicly asked for permission to go abroad," he said. Yingluck had hoped to travel to Hong Kong from Sunday until February 22. "The opposition is trying to make out that she wants to flee abroad in order to discredit her," Norawit said. "This is simply not true." Thailand's military government denied Yingluck permission to travel overseas on Sunday to ensure she is in the country to face the criminal charges. She faces up to 10 years in jail if found guilty. The charges are the latest twist in 10 years of turbulent politics that have pitted Yingluck and her brother against the royalist military establishment that sees the Shinawatras as a threat and reviles their populist policies. Thaksin, who remains hugely influential in Thailand, was ousted in a coup in 2006 and fled into exile to avoid jail over a corruption conviction two years later on charges he says were politically motivated. — Reuters |
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