Marketing director ITM Jusnan Ruslan said the government’s programme insisted on low-calorie coal to reduce electricity tariffs. However, ITM produces medium- and high-calorie coal of which 87 percent is exported to other countries.

“We will look into it. If the programme is good, we will acquire a mining site for low-calorie coal,” Jusnan told thejakartapost.com on Monday.

The 35,000-megawatt project is expected to use domestic coal amid sluggish global demand as a result of low oil prices. However, coal producers have complained about the sales price, prompting the Indonesian Coal Mining Association (APBI) to demand “insurance premiums” to offset the risk of future price drops.

“I’m not sure about the insurance. But regarding the price, we’d better leave it to the market,” Jusnan said.

He explained that the biggest buyers for ITM’s coal were India, Japan, and China, the three countries together accounting for 52.84 percent of ITM’s sales.

Last year, India bought 5.4 million tons (19.15 percent) of the 28.2 million tons of coal sold in total. Japan and China bought 5.1 million tons (18.09 percent) and 4.4 million ton (15.6 percent), respectively.

“Asia is still our biggest market. India is growing fast and China’s demand is still good, while in Japan most of the power plants are still using coal. Japan is our premium market,” Jusnan said.

HANOI – Vietstar Airlines is waiting for the government approval to expand its operations.

The HCM City-based airline currently operates in passenger and cargo transport, aircraft repair and maintenance, aviation fuel supply, and pilot training in Vietnam.

The company plans to use aircraft, including Boeing 737 and Airbus 320 models, in the first five years, baogiaothong.vn reported.

“The company has built a corporate indentity, including a logo and icon, suitable for its business operations,” said the General Director of Vietstar Airlines, Pham Trinh Phuong.

If the airline is granted a licence, it will focus on domestic routes between northern and southern Vietnam, as well as on routes from Vietnam to the northeast and southeast Asian nations.

As of March 31, 2015, the company had registered capital of VND800 billion (US$35.8 million). The company still lacks an additional VND47.3 billion to reach the minimum capitalisation required for an international and domestic passenger and cargo carrier, as per a government decree issued in 2013.

Statistics of the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV) show that the country currently has eight airlines, including Vietnam Airlines, Jetstar Pacific Airlines, Vietnam Air Services Company (VASCO), VietJet Air, Blue Sky Travel, Event Company Ltd, Hai Au Airline JSC, and Green Planet Technology JSC.

“CAAV will support Vietstar Airlines in exploring domestic and international routes, as well as in building a cargo carrier airline,” said the General Director of CAAV, Lai Xuan Thanh.

Currently, Vietnam does not have an airline specialising only in cargo transport services.

As of the end of 2015, Vietnam had 131 aircraft. Vietnam Airlines has the largest fleet, with 86 aircraft. VietJet Air is second, with 25 aircraft. Jetstar Pacific is third, with 11 aircraft.

Proton is on the ropes, struggling with woes ranging from mounting debts to slumping sales and a deficit of cash to pay its suppliers. The firm that has bled losses of more than 2.5 billion ringgit (US$619.9 million) for the last four years wants the government to hand it an urgent S$500 million (US$364.32 million) grant, to stay afloat.

But that request is now threatened by the political spat between Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who founded Proton in the mid-1980s as a national car project and is currently its very hands-on chairman, and Prime Minister Najib Razak.

Employees of the carmaker, who are staring at job losses, and parts suppliers, who are struggling to get paid by Proton, fear that they are likely to become scapegoats in the ongoing political bickering.

“They (employees) and vendors are being asked to choose between Dr Mahathir and the (Najib) government,” said a senior Proton executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The executive added that there is widespread respect for Dr Mahathir, who remains the company’s No. 1 supporter. “But there is a growing sense that he is now a liability.”

Proton declined official comment for this article.

Since early last year, Dr Mahathir has publicly called for Najib’s resignation over allegations of economic mismanagement and corruption. He ratcheted up his campaign last month when he resigned from the ruling Umno party to spearhead a citizens’ movement to dislodge Najib.

The Najib government and Umno have lashed back. In a sign of growing annoyance with Dr Mahathir’s actions, the government removed him two weeks ago from the prestigious position as adviser to the national oil corporation Petronas, a move that has gained widespread approval in Umno. The government cannot sack Dr Mahathir from Proton. The company, which started business as a state entity, is now owned entirely by DRB-Hicom Bhd, a conglomerate controlled by businessman Syed Mokhtar Albukhary.

But the troubled carmaker desperately needs government support and the Mahathir factor is starting to prove to be more of a burden than a benefit for DRB-Hicom, which also relies heavily on government-awarded business.

How the Najib administration handles the crisis at Proton will have far-reaching repercussions for the auto sector that employs more than 500,000 workers and is estimated to contribute more than 30 billion ringgit to the country’s gross domestic product annually.

Proton alone has 10,000 employees and the wider ecosystem of parts suppliers and other related services is estimated to employ nearly 30,000 people. Already the cutback in production at Proton is hurting its parts suppliers, who are now being offered unsold cars as payment, while employees are grappling with the prospect of layoffs.

Proton has yet to file its latest financial results. But investment analysts tracking Malaysia’s auto sector say the carmaker is losing close to 25 million ringgit each month because of interest charges on loans and the financial load on its growing stockpile of unsold cars. Industry executives estimate it has about 30,000 units of unsold cars, or roughly three months’ worth of inventory based on last year’s sales of just over 102,000 units.

Dr Mahathir started Proton in 1985 with help from Mitsubishi as the cornerstone of his industrialisation push that called for billions of dollars in investments to finance the setting up of steel and cement facilities. But many of those projects failed because of mismanagement and Proton is the last of his flawed industrialisation plan.

Proton struggled initially. But due to protectionist policies that made imported models very expensive and out of range for most Malaysians, the company turned around to become the country’s top-selling carmaker.

But the gradual liberalisation of the domestic auto market since Dr Mahathir left office in 2003 has resulted in Proton’s market share plunging from a high of more than 60 per cent in the 1990s. For the whole of last year, Proton sold 102,175 cars – 15.3 per cent of 666,674 vehicles sold in Malaysia.

The other national carmaker Perodua, which is partly owned by Daihatsu, took 32 per cent of total sales. Honda and Toyota were at third and fourth places with just over 14 per cent market share each, according data from the Malaysia Automotive Association.

Dr Mahathir, who has the final say on major decisions in Proton, believes it has a future and a government grant to fund research and development for a new engine will make the firm viable again.

Industry executives and Malaysian government officials are not convinced.

“Even if Proton receives a grant, it won’t solve the company’s troubles,” said a financial consultant, who has done work for Proton and the Malaysian government.

Government officials say the days of Kuala Lumpur playing the role of banker of last resort for the car manufacturer are over. The government has resolved that its three-decade policy of nurturing a national car project under Proton has failed and its priority now is the introduction of policies that will bring duties and tariff structures in line with Asean’s plan to create a common economic community.

The Najib administration also wants to turn Malaysia into a regional hub for the development of electric cars, and exploratory talks are under way with Tesla of the United States, officials say.

The only option available to Proton is a strategic tie-up with a global carmaker. Talks are under way between Proton and Japan’s Suzuki, which is hoping to make a push into the Asean car market. But Proton has a bad track record for forging alliances. A proposed tie-up with Germany’s Volkswagen in 2011 was scuttled because of Malaysia’s refusal to surrender management control of the national carmaker.

The Sep Eeli restaurant, well known in Vientiane for its fish flavoured noodle soup ( khao piek louk xin pa ) or rice noodle soup with fish meatballs, is set to open more branches in neighbouring countries in the years to come.

“We already have a branch of Sep Eeli in Phuket province, Thailand, under the Sep Eeli copyright after our name was registered with the Lao Ministry of Science and Technology recently,” the owner and founder of the Sep Eeli franchise, Latsamy Vetsaphong, told Vientiane Times this week.

She says many potential business partners have expressed interest in buying a franchise to operate a Sep Eeli brand noodle restaurant in both Europe and Asean.

“Recently I had an informal discussion with our business partners, one of whom is interested in buying our franchise to open an outlet in Poland. I think it is a great opportunity for business expansion but the lack of well-trained chefs is a critical issue,” she said.

Latsamy said there should be at least three Lao chefs who are professionally trained to work at franchise restaurants in each country.

“This is still a problem for us because many chefs and cooks do their training at Pakpasak Technical College but they are all snapped up by restaurants and hotels in Laos,” she said, adding that she continues to make enquiries about newly-trained chefs every year.

In Laos, khao piek or rice noodle soup is a popular meal for people on the go because it is easy to eat and cook. Office workers in a rush order a hearty bowl of slippery long noodles for their breakfast almost every day, slurping down the satisfying flavours with relish.

Within the next 10 years, the noodle franchise should expand to more than 3-5 Asean countries, Latsamy says.

The expansion of franchise restaurants depends on the budget of the buyers, but the design and décor of the eateries will follow the original Sep Eeli style.

Latsamy says there are at least 7-8 Sep Eeli noodle shops at various shopping malls in Vientiane and this year three branches will open in Luang Prabang, Champassak and Attapeu provinces.

“We are in the process of quality checks of our products to make sure they are in line with international standards; we’d also like to become a supplier of instant noodles and ingredients in the future,” she added.

After the launch of the franchise in Myanmar this July, watch out for Sep Eeli noodle soup in Cambodia, Malaysia and Vietnam and enjoy a taste of home away from home.

In a recent interview with the Inquirer, Ayala managing director and group head of corporate strategy and development Paolo Maximo Borromeo said the conglomerate was in talks with potential partners in the automotive industry and might find tangible opportunities “within two to three months.”

“We are exploring different manufacturing partnerships. We’re looking at it at not just for vehicle manufacturing but also for auto parts and auto components,” Borromeo said.

Each manufacturing deal might require an investment by the conglomerate of more than P1 billion, he said, adding that the group was open to multiple deals.

The plan is for Ayala to scale up opportunities in automotive manufacturing—an industry which is both capital- and labor-intensive—to build on the businesses that it has today.

Ayala’s electronic manufacturing services (EMS) arm Integrated Micro-Electronics Inc., which is based in Laguna, has become the second-biggest EMS provider for the global automotive industry based on 2014 revenues, global market research New Venture Research said. Of the Ayala group’s 40,000 global headcount, IMI is the biggest employer with 15,000 people.

“We also realize that our only big manufacturer now (in the group) is IMI but today it’s more of an automotive electronics manufacturing company,” Borromeo said.

Apart from IMI, Ayala also has car dealerships under multiple brands—Isuzu, Honda and Volkswagen. It owns 15 percent each in the car assembly/manufacturing operations of both Honda and Isuzu in the country.

Borromeo said that while Ayala’s participation in the local car industry was currently small, this could be scaled up. Ayala is interested to expand its interest if either Honda or Isuzu would expand its local manufacturing operations but Borromeo said these Japanese manufacturers also had other factories in neighboring countries like Thailand and Indonesia.

“So we’d rather think of what else can we bring in,” Borromeo said, adding that Ayala had previously wooed Volkswagen to put up a local plant but this did not push through.

Apart from the option of bringing car brands to manufacture locally, Borromeo said Ayala’s participation could also be in the domestic manufacturing of auto parts, noting these were also covered by the CARS programme.

Borromeo cited Indonesia’s biggest conglomerate PT Astra International—deemed by many as the barometer of the Indonesian economy—as a good example. “It’s like an automotive conglomerate and is not just into dealership. It has auto parts and auto manufacturing,” he said.