PKR vice-president Rafizi Ramli has fired his first salvo since making a political comeback by rejecting outright the call by former Prime Minister and Finance Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak to use public money to bail out financially-strapped Sapura Energy Bhd.
While he sympathises with the fate of Sapura Energy’s workforce having to face an uncertain future, he deemed spending billions in taxpayers’ money to rescue selected ailing corporations as unfair.
“Even more when a huge amount of money amounting to over billions of ringgit has already been injected into the Sapura since over a decade ago,” he pointed out in a statement accessible on his Facebook account.
“Although the people’s money has continuously been injected into Sapura, the company continues to experience financial problems even when crude oil prices are at a high level (unlike other oil companies which would be reaping windfall when global crude oil prices rise).”
In his Facebook posting dated March 20, Najib has listed down the following as the consequences of Sapura Energy going bankrupt:
- Direct loss to 10.6 million ASB investors is as much as RM4 bil
- Indirect losses to PNB, the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) and various public mutual trusts as a result of debt amounting to RM10 bil owing to local banks, in particular Maybank which is 50% owned by PNB.
- Nearly 10,000 high-paying jobs will be lost.
- Around 4,500 vendors/suppliers will be affected, most of them being Bumiputera companies.
- Sapura Energy’s valuable assets will be sold at fire-sale prices
- Malaysia will lose its largest petroleum service company which serves the country’s most important sector.
- Malaysia will also lose a multinational because Sapura had previously implemented projects in more than 30 foreign countries.
“Heeding Najib’s call would mean that financial allocations towards knowledge and expertise building for small entrepreneurs and the younger generation as well as education loans and the likes will continue to be channelled to some elite groups when these privileged people never ever give a thought of ensuring a better return on investment to the people.”
Moving forward, Rafizi said he will continue to monitor this issue closely “by presenting relevant figures in the coming days to remind the people not to be deceived again by Najib’s idea of economic management”.
“I’m waiting for him to reply to my statement as he was so eager to answer all the issues on his social media during this time. With my return to the political arena, I shall render feedback to every twisted idea from Najib.”
At 9.30am, Sapura Energy was down 0.5 sen or 14.29% to an all-time low of 3 sen with 8.34 million shares traded, thus valuing the company at RM479 mil. – March 23, 2022
