News by Syahirah Syed Jaafar

The Melaka-based group, which is involved in property development, property investment, hospitality, retail and education, will also implement a 30% pay cut for employees firm-wide, while some will be on unpaid leave for six months starting May 1.

“About 40,000 or 96.8% of respondents said they had benefited from the Prihatin Economic Stimulus Package announced by the government on March 27, of which 68.2% said they had received three forms of assistance, whereas 13.9% received two and 17.9% received one,” the DOSM said in a statement today.

The ABM said its member banks will communicate with impacted customers on the exact procedures they will need to follow to take up the moratorium as well as the instalment payment options available to them once the six-month moratorium is over.

Affin Hwang Capital analyst Brian Yeoh: The potential divestment of Tesco Malaysia is a positive news for Sime as the hypermarket has been reporting continued losses since FY15 (financial year 2015) [except for FY18, likely due to one-off effects] due to intense competition from discount grocers and the growing e-commerce space as well as an increase in affluent customers.

MCCC said the Malaysian Optical Council under the Ministry of Health had earlier approved the operating of optical shops during the first and second MCO periods (March 18 to April 14) since the optometry service is categorised under essential health services.

Some quarters, like JP Morgan and Malaysian Institute of Economic Research, had previously predicted that Malaysia's Covid-19 infections would only peak by mid-April.

The daily recoveries figure exceeds the new cases for the fourth time this month. There are 118 new confirmed cases, an increase from 106 yesterday.

Generally, more than half of survey respondents (52.6%) said they were most affected when it came to financial savings, whereas 6.2% said they were least affected.

BNM said in its Financial Stability Review for Second Half 2019 that the ratio of overall household debt-to-GDP rose to 82.7% as at end-2019 amid slower GDP growth, and remained elevated relative to regional peers.

The committee’s aim is to strike a balance between the nation’s economic priorities and the effective enforcement of the MCO.