Unionists welcome NWC proposal to help low-wage workers- Singapore

Unionists welcome NWC proposal to help low-wage workers- Singapore

By Imelda Saad,

SINGAPORE: Unionists have cheered the National Wages Council’s (NWC) proposal for companies to give rank-and-file workers a one-off lump sum to help them cope with inflation.

While most companies agree that it is a good idea to give a lump sum to low-wage workers, there is no guarantee that all employers will eventually do so.

Stephen Lee, president of the Singapore National Employers’ Federation, said: “There’s really no way of making sure that companies pay (a minimum sum), so we have decided not to be overly prescriptive…

“Through our own briefings, through our own contacts with our members, we’ll continue to urge them to do so. We are quite sure that many companies will do it.”

While most companies do not want to be pinned down on a quantum for the one-off payment, some unionists said a fair amount will be anything up to 3 percent of a low-wage worker’s annual salary. For some, this could be as much as S$700.

However, the NWC stressed that the actual quantum should depend on the company’s performance.

G Muthu Kumar, general secretary, Amalgamated Union of Public Daily Rated Workers, said: “I hope that employer will understand that at this present stage, the low-wage worker really needs whatever they are going to give. I hope the employer will come up with a good figure and help the low-wage worker.”

Some unionists are also concerned that employers may take advantage of this special one-off payment to cut annual bonuses.

Francis Lim, president of the United Workers of Electronic and Electrical Industries, said: “I do have my concerns, but we will work with the companies and we will also explain to them that bonuses or variable bonuses that are profit-sharing should not be cut because what we are asking in this NWC guideline is to help the low-wage worker.”

Furthermore, some people have questioned if the one-off payment is enough to help those who are struggling to cope with rising prices.

One worker said: “I think this is feasible only in the short run because it’s one-off, but what about in the long run? Inflation is going to keep rising, it’s not going to be just for this period.”

“Inflation is always going up, but salary doesn’t go up so fast,” another added.

The NTUC said given the uncertain economic climate this year, workers should moderate their expectations when it comes to wage increases and bonuses.

NTUC’s Deputy Secretary-General, Heng Chee How, said: “On the national level, the expected growth this year is less than last year and therefore, I do not expect the overall increase this year – in terms of the built-in part – to be higher than last year.”

Nonetheless, the NTUC is confident that tripartite partners – government, employers and unions – will help workers and companies to tackle the challenges ahead.

NTUC said 458 out of the 1,000 unionised companies gave out variable payments based on performance last year.

- CNA/so

Source : Channel NewsAsia - 17 May 2008

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Donations continue to pour in for earthquake victims in China

Donations continue to pour in for earthquake victims in China

By May Wong

SINGAPORE: Donations from various sectors in Singapore continue to pour in for earthquake victims in China.

MediaCorp plans to donate S$100,000, while Raffles Medical Group is pledging S$20,000.

Local bakery chain, BreadTalk, is also doing its part to raise funds by selling ‘Peace Panda’ buns. The entire proceeds from the sale of the S$2 buns will go towards helping the quake victims.

Mrs Evelyn Chua bought S$10 worth of the Peace Panda buns and donated cash on top of her purchase.

She said: “I read the papers every day and cry for those victims. It pains my heart to see images of the children who died. My donation can’t help much, but I do my bit and hopefully, it will add up…”

George Quek, chairman of BreadTalk Group, said: “If BreadTalk outlets come together to assist in the efforts, we can draw in the donations.”

The last time BreadTalk did such a fundraising project was in 2005 to help the tsunami victims. They managed to raise S$10,000 over five days.

This time round, the bakery chain hopes to raise S$500,000 to help the China earthquake victims.

Another donation drive, which started on Wednesday, is at SHINES – a private international school where many of its 2,000 students are from China.

Lin Yan Zhou said: “Every little bit counts. As I cannot go back to China to help them, I’m collecting money here to buy water and food for the victims in China.”

So far, the students have raised more than S$10,000 and the money will be given to the Chinese Embassy in Singapore.

The Singapore Red Cross (SRC) has also received a total of S$600,000 through cash and cheque donations for the Sichuan quake victims.

The amount includes a single donation of S$300,000 by a man who had dropped off the cash at the SRC Society.

SRC has ordered S$200,000 worth of Ready-to-Eat food packs and these will be delivered to the Red Cross Society of China, directly from the supplier’s factory in Dalian.

The funds collected will also be used for relief operations, as well as reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts.

Meanwhile, Mercy Relief plans to start fundraising for China’s quake victims from Saturday, once it gets the permit from the Commissioner of Charities. The organisation is already sending 500 tents to Chengdu.

UPS is contributing over US$1 million through its charitable arm - The UPS Foundation.

Maybank is working with the Singapore Red Cross Society to facilitate donations by credit card. To reward donors and encourage more acts of giving, Maybank will be awarding its customers five times the usual points.

- CNA/so/ls

Source : Channel NewsAsia - 17 May 2008

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Thailand assures Singapore that rice supply can meet global demand

Thailand assures Singapore that rice supply can meet global demand

By Wong Siew Ying,

SINGAPORE: Thailand expects to harvest an additional one million tonnes of rice this year because of good weather conditions. The country is revising its 8.7-million-tonne export projection upwards by about 9 percent.

In a meeting with Singapore rice importers, Thailand’s Foreign Trade Department has said that supply will be enough to meet global demand.

Thailand hopes to export 9.5 to 10 million tonnes of rice this year – about 35 percent of the global demand. On average, the country produces 20.5 million tonnes of rice annually and about 11 million tonnes of it is for its own consumption.

Thai trade officials said rice prices have stabilised in the past weeks and they believe the market is resilient enough to cope with the recent natural disasters in Asia.

Apiradi Tantraporn, director-general, Department of Foreign Trade, said: “With the cyclone disaster in Myanmar, that means about 500 metric tonnes of rice that Myanmar had expected to export this year were wiped out. But we hope it would not have a high impact on the price.”

Ms Apiradi added that Thailand’s Agricultural Ministry hopes to improve the efficiency of Thai farmers by helping them to build silos to store excess rice stock.

More rice buyers are expected to turn to Thailand, as India and Vietnam have decided to restrict their rice exports.

Chookiat Ophaswongse, president of Thailand Rice Exporter Association, said: “That’s 4 or 5 million tonnes out from the export side. I think Thailand can easily fill up those portions left out by India and Vietnam this year. In the first 4 months, we have already exported up to 4 million tonnes.”

Singapore imported over 270,000 tonnes of rice last year and 61 percent of that amount came from Thailand. That is about 3 percent of Thailand’s total market share.

Local industry players are glad that Thailand has pledged not to limit the export of rice as they hope the move will help to regulate supply and ease the pressure on prices.

Andrew Tan, chairman of Singapore General Rice Importers, said: “There are (natural) disasters, global warming, and so many other uncertainties. Moreover, the oil prices are shooting to record high.

“All these factors will add up and the price of rice that is going to the market will be higher. Even if the price has an adjustment in the future, I don’t see it falling back to the level that it was at a year ago.”

Singapore importers said the spike in prices also means that more capital needs to be set aside to fulfil the government stockpile.

Importers are required to contribute two packs of rice to the stockpile for every pack that they sell in the market. It is estimated that the local stockpile could last for three months in the event of a global rice shortage.

- CNA/so

Source : Channel NewsAsia - 17 May 2008

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Developers face higher funding costs - Singapore

Developers face higher funding costs - Singapore

By CONRAD TAN

PROPERTY developers in Asia face a ‘double whammy’ of rising credit spreads on loans and banks lending less against the value of new projects, a senior Asian property fund manager said yesterday.

Mr Lim: Is expecting the blow-out in the credit margins to be sustained
And the wider interest margins that banks have been demanding on loans since the start of the financial market turmoil are likely to be sustained, said Olivier Lim, chief financial officer of CapitaLand, South-east Asia’s largest developer.

Mr Lim and Ng Beng Tiong, the Singapore-based director of operations at ARA Asia Dragon Fund, were speaking at a panel discussion on the last day of a conference organised by Merrill Lynch that started on Tuesday.

Mr Ng said that although benchmark interest rates in Singapore and Hong Kong have fallen, ‘what we’ve seen is that the margins have shot up tremendously - more than double in many cases’.

Before the US sub-prime mortgage crisis broke, property companies in Asia could borrow at spreads of less than 100 basis points or one percentage point above interbank lending rates, Mr Ng said.

‘Now banks are quoting 200, 300 and for some smaller developers we understand that they’re being quoted 400′ basis-point spreads.

Besides paying higher interest rate spreads on loans, developers are also finding that the proportion of a project’s value that banks are willing to fund - the loan-to-value (LTV) ratio - has shrunk, he said.

‘In the bullish days, we were seeing 70-80 per cent LTV. Now banks are quoting 50-60 per cent, so it’s a double whammy for project financing.’

ARA Asia Dragon Fund is the flagship private real estate fund of ARA Asset Management, an affiliate of Hong Kong’s Cheung Kong Group. At the end of last year, the fund, which invests in major cities throughout Asia, had more than US$1.5 billion of capital from institutional investors worldwide, including Calpers, the largest US public pension fund.

CapitaLand’s Mr Lim said the first quarter saw ‘the worst credit market situation I’ve seen in my 19-year career’.

Although spreads have since narrowed slightly, ‘I think the blow-out in the credit margins will be sustained’, he added. ‘I don’t see it compressing to where it was last year.’

At CapitaLand, ‘we’re seeing, on average, rates go up by between 60 to 100 basis points, depending on whether it’s corporate risk or project risk’.

‘But we are sensing a flight to quality, so for us we’ve been able to raise about S$4 billion overall of credit debt from multiple sources in the first quarter alone. We still have access, but we do have to adjust to a higher margin. Thankfully, the cost of money is much lower, so the overall cost is about the same as it was last year.’

Last month, the firm raised another S$2 billion of bank funding for its new condominium development at Farrer Court. ‘Banks are still lending,’ he said.

In Asia, outside its main markets of Singapore, China and Australia, CapitaLand has been ‘probing many other markets’ including Thailand, Malaysia and the Middle East, ‘but it’s becoming much clearer to us that two countries are at the top of the list - Vietnam and India’, he said. ‘We’re starting to accelerate our investments in both of those countries.’

Meanwhile, despite suggestions that property prices in Singapore have risen too far too fast, ‘I think the market is a lot healthier than people indicate’, Mr Lim said.

Source : Business Times - 17 May 2008

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Reit market may see mergers, privatisations - Singapore

Reit market may see mergers, privatisations - Singapore

AS THE market for listed property trusts in Singapore matures, it is likely that some will merge or go private.
There has been ‘a lot of speculation’ that such movements will take place soon, said experts on real estate investment trusts (Reits) at a regional property conference this week.

There are ‘three to five Reits in Singapore that seem obvious’ for acquisitions or privatisations, said Mr Mark Pawley, the chief executive officer of Oxley Capital.

‘It’s somewhat surprising that we haven’t seen more obvious transactions’ in that direction, he added.

Oxley is a Singapore-based private investment house that focuses on real estate and private equity. It has a stake in the manager of the Cambridge Industrial Trust, an industrial property Reit.

Mr Pawley suggested that one reason the Singapore Reit market has yet to consolidate is that private equity funds, which could help engineer some of these deals, might be ‘all cashed out’.

He was speaking to property players as part of a panel on Reits at the annual Financial Times Asia Property Summit, held at the St Regis Singapore on Thursday.

The topic was ‘Reits: Still a good bet?’ and the answer was, for the most part, yes.

Asian Reit markets reached a peak last October, before they started to feel the effects of the fallout from the United States sub-prime mortgage crisis, said Mr Daniel Ekins, the head of Asia-Pacific real estate securities at Deutsche Bank’s property arm, RREEF.

That was followed by a general sell-off of property trusts until mid-March, which pushed values down by 25 to 35 per cent in each country, he added. Since then, the values of Reits have rebounded by about 10 per cent.

While retail investors are still reluctant to re-enter the market, institutional investors have already started buying Reits, Mr Ekins noted.

‘The turnaround has already started. We’ve seen people coming to our funds who were reluctant to do so in the fourth quarter of last year,’ he said.

‘But retail investors will want to see prices rise 20 per cent before coming in,’ he added.

FIONA CHAN

REASON FOR DELAY IN CONSOLIDATION
Mr Mark Pawley, the CEO of Oxley Capital, said it was ’somewhat surprising’ that there have not been more acquisitions or privatisations of Reits in Singapore.

He suggested that one reason the Reit market here has yet to consolidate is that private equity funds, which could help engineer some of these deals, might be ‘all cashed out’.

Source : Straits Times - 17 May 2008

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Singapore SingTel allots $220m to beef up mobile network

Singapore SingTel allots $220m to beef up mobile network

SINGTEL, the Republic’s biggest telecommunications company with more than 2.5 million customers, will spend $220 million to upgrade its mobile network over the next 10 months.
It announced yesterday that it had awarded a contract to upgrade its 2G and 3G - second-generation and third-generation - mobile network to Ericsson Telecommunications.

SingTel’s executive vice-president of networks, Mr Mark Chong, said the enhancements would help the telco ‘deliver unparalleled, reliable mobile service and coverage to our customers’.

The upgrade is also being done with an eye to future growth, especially for mobile data, as more customers are accessing data and the Internet on the move, he added.

When the upgrade is complete, SingTel customers will be able to enjoy higher download speeds of up to 14.4mbps from 3.6mbps currently.

Upload speeds will also accelerate to 5.76mbps from the current 384kbps cap.

Within the next 18 months, SingTel expects to be able to offer even faster download speeds of up to 42mbps and upload speeds of 12mbps.

CHUA HIAN HOU

Source : Straits Times - 17 May 2008

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Discussions continue for national broadband network OpCo bid - Singapore

Discussions continue for national broadband network OpCo bid - Singapore

By Rachel Kelly, Channel NewsAsia

SINGAPORE: With three months to the deadline for submission of proposals to operate Singapore’s next generation broadband network, some of the firms potentially in the running may be in talks on possible tie-ups and common bids.

Under the government’s plan, the operating company - or OpCo - has to be separate from the firm that builds the network - or NetCo.

The race for the NetCo licence is down to just two consortiums - Infinity and OpenNet. But it is still unclear how many proposals will eventually come in for the OpCo contract.

The big three telco players – SingTel, StarHub and M1 - are among the 11 firms shortlisted to submit proposals.

Communications solutions provider Alcatel-Lucent is still weighing its options. Its managing director, Oliver Foo, said: “We’re talking to a bunch of people, I think what’s clear is that we will not lead a consortium.”

“What’s Alcatel-Lucent’s model? We provide service solutions to help our customers provide services. I don’t want to be in a situation where we compete with them. We want to help them - partner with them - provide the right type of services to put them in play in this project.”

“If you look at the consortiums (that) submitted bids into the NetCo portion, every single player in there is a major player in its own right. This project is of such a huge size and complexity that you need the different players to come together,” he added.

Other big global names that could take part in the bidding include Japan’s NTT, Nokia, Deutsche Telekom and BT. And some of these could form consortiums to make joint bids.

The Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) said it has already issued specifications and evaluation criteria for the OpCo, so the consortium leaders will have to decide how they want to submit their bids to best meet the requirements.

Khoo Chen Hsung, vice president of CIMB-GK Research, said: “The NGNBN (next generation national broadband network) will definitely change the landscape of the telco (market) here in Singapore.

“So the way I see it is what… SingTel (will potentially) do to hedge (itself) against uncertainty is - let’s just go and get as many customers and then we may have some to lose further down the road.”

The request for proposals for the OpCo is expected to close at the end of August. The successful bidder will be announced in the first quarter of next year. - CNA/ac

Source : Channel NewsAsia - 17 May 2008

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