SJPP; Another PKFZ In The Making
Bravo! 2,738 business applicants have been successful in getting their arses saved by the government.
I am talking about The Star's article today on "SJPP approves RM3.5 bil loans" (Star Biz headlines). It was reported that Syarikat Jaminan Pembiayaan Perniagaan Bhd. ("SJPP") has thus far approved RM3,500,000,000 (that's a whole lot of zeros dei!!!) worth of financing to 'eligible' companies to help them survive this economic downturn. Basically, something like what the US is doing in keeping the likes of Citibank and AIG afloat with taxpayer's money – the now taboo term called 'government bailout'. Only slightly different, our government (SJPP is owned by the Minister of Finance Inc.) does not disburse the money direct but stands as an 80% guarantor for the loans disbursed to these 'eligible' companies.
Key point – if the beneficiary company does not repay the loan, the government will have to repay the bank with your money… and mine too!
That leads us to the question of who are these recipients of which we, the rakyat, are standing for as guarantor? How transparent is SJPP going to be on this? Will we, the guarantors, get to know what measures are being put in place by the recipients of the loans to ensure that they will not default on their repayments or worse, run off with the loan money?
So far RM3,500,000,000 have been approved. The total available under 2 separate funds is RM10,000,000,000. Yes! Whopping figures! Much larger than a Double Whopper burger. 99.99% of Malaysians will never come close to seeing this kind of money in their bank accounts.
Back to my question on transparency. Where can we taxpayers find out who are the beneficiaries of this scheme? Can we go to SJPP's website (http://www.sjpp.com.my/) to retrieve the list of names of the beneficiaries? So far I can't find any at SJPP's website.
