\u201cSome things are expensive, such as the dredging work which would allow the larger ships in. It is typically something that you\u2019d might look to the state to do, but in many places the government hasn\u2019t really got the capability to put in place major improvements \u2013 so the ports will be looking toward making private arrangements,\u201d says Holman Fenwick Willan’s Alistair Mackie.<\/p>\n
This actually leaves the door wide open for private operations to scoop a very good deal. As the owner of the Malayan Port of Tanjung Pelepas is doing right now. Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary, who owns not only PTP but Johore Port through MMC Corp, is taking over Penang from the Malayan government where it has been languishing since 1994. It’s true it hasn’t done well in state hands, with a debt rising by over 460% in five years and people point out that growth is nowhere near that of Port Klang (which saw increases of 14% per year) or Tanjung Pelepas, which has throughput six times that of Penang.<\/p>\n
However, David Wignall of David Wignall Associates points out that these comparisons don\u2019t necessarily give the whole picture: \u201cHalf of Port Klang\u2019s container throughput is transhipment, which is not great from a commercial perspective,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Still, the Malaysian Cabinet has approved the deal over and above other alternatives, including a bid from local government Minister Lim Guan Eng. Importantly, this \u2018de facto\u2019 takeover (at the time of writing it has not yet been inked) incorporates an RM400m dredging requirement.<\/p>\n
Despite this, many think that MMC don\u2019t really have Penang\u2019s best interests at heart. They are sceptical that further dredging by MMC will actually be carried out as it is quite possible that it sees Penang port as better employed as a feeder, simply passing freight through to its other operations, especially Tanjung Pelepas. Further, the port regulator may not be able to do much about this as it reports to the federal authority, not the central government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Intra-Asia ports will find they will have to learn to swallow or choke on a cascade of larger ship sizes coming from the main Europe-Asian trades. But typically, they wont get much state help.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-8455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8455\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8455"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=8455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}