BRI business and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) director Muhammad Irfan said credit disbursement for SOEs in 2016 would increase 28.6 per cent from 2015. 2015 loans to SOEs stood at Rp 70 trillion.

“The loan increase to SOEs from Rp 70 trillion to Rp 90 trillion is in line with the government’s expectation to have SOEs operate as agents of the national economy,” he said during a visit to Sukabumi in West Java, as reported by kompas.com on Wednesday.

The loans, he further explained, were mainly allocated to infrastructure, energy and food security programs.

In the first quarter of the year, BRI has allocated Rp 75 trillion in loans to SOEs. The logistics agency Bulog, state-owned electricity company PLN, and state-owned energy giant Pertamina were among state-owned companies that received the loans.

Group chief financial officer Ooi Teik Huat said on Wednesday Kian Joo had invested about US$23 million to build two plants in the Thilawa Special Economic Zone near Yangon, the capital of Myanmar.

These plants would used to manufacture cartons and cans.

“With the market in Malaysia and Vietnam maturing, Myanmar will be a new market to expand in,” he said after the company’s 58th AGM.

On the termination of Aspire Insight’s takeover offer of Kian Joo, he said this was purely due to the pricing issue, but did not wish to disclose the price Kian Joo was asking for, as it has a non-disclosure agreement with the latter.

“Kian Joo board is open to offers. It is the duty of the board to take a look at offers so long as it comes with the right format and structure, and through proper channels,” he said, adding that for now it wasn’t in talks with anyone and would announce if there were offers.

The 54-year-old German, who is also the airline’s managing director, is stepping down “due to his changing personal circumstances”, said the airline in a statement yesterday.

The national carrier has started searching for a replacement both internally and externally, while Mueller serves a six-month notice period until September. He remains a non-executive director on MAB’s board.

“Unfortunately, personal circumstances will make it difficult for me to complete my full term,” Mueller said in the airline’s statement, without elaborating.

He had previously turned around Ireland’s Aer Lingus and was brought in by MAB on a three-year contract, as part of the carrier’s restructuring exercise to lift it from the red and revamp its image following two plane disasters in 2014.

He joined the airline’s board in January last year, became CEO-designate in March and officially took over from previous chief Ahmad Jauhari Yahya on May 1 the same year.

The airline’s chief operations officer Peter Bellew has been appointed as executive director with immediate effect.

Sovereign wealth fund Khazanah Nasional, sole owner of MAB, said in a separate statement that it would undertake succession planning for the airline’s new chief executive through consultation with MAB’s board and the finance ministry.

The fund also said that the airline’s recovery plan is “on track”.

MAB was known as Malaysia Airlines Systems Berhad (MAS) before the major restructuring started in August 2014, with the airline delisted from the local stock exchange in December 2014, appointment of new senior management and 6,000 jobs axed.

Dak Lak, the biggest plantation of the robusta (species of coffee bean) with 30 per cent contribution to Vietnam’s economy, the second largest robusta export, has seen only a few spells of rain since last December, the country’s Coffee and Cocoa Association said last month.

Rainfall in April in the Central Highlands and the south is forecast to be 50 per cent to 70 per cent lower than average, according to the Vietnam’s National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting. Rainfall in Dak Lak Province is 86 per cent less as compared to this time last year.

Some 20 per cent of the 599 reservoirs used for irrigation have dried up, the local media reported, and added that 118 are out of use as compared to 30 at the same time last year. At least 7,000 hectare of coffee plantations have died there since March, according to the provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.

Local resident Pham Van Thao, 28, said besides the irrigation water, the lack of water for consumption was the worst since he was born. Currently, there were two days with water in a week since early this year, he said.

“It should rain in March or April but it has not rained till now,” Hoang Manh Thu, a coffee grower in Cu M’gar Commune said.

According to EDE Consulting Pacific, a Germany- based consulting firm which has studied Việt Nam’s coffee supply chain, the biggest factor for vulnerability was the dependency on water for irrigation.

The firm presentative said farmers are using up the groundwater and levels are already declining. With increasing temperatures, increasing evapotranspiration and changes in rainfall pressure on the water levels will increase.

Many farmers have dug about 40 metres deep without finding any water.

Farmer Thu said he could earlier tend his 5ha of coffee plantations with two wells, adding, “Now five wells cannot provide enough water.”

A recent survey by EDE Consulting Pacific said that as many local farmers over-irrigated and exploited the underground water, they were contributing to a harder drought.

Considering water as a free gift from nature, many local farmers use even more than what the government has suggested.

In the year before, most farmers used 700 to 1,000 litres of water for a plant each time, which was some 60 per cent higher than the amount of water suggested by the local agriculture authorities, Truong Hong, deputy director of the Central Highlands Agriculture and Forestry Science Institute said.

Meanwhile, D’Haeze, from EDE Consulting who has been working since 2005 with coffee farmers on an experiment to determine the right amount of water to use, said the government had suggested that even between 400 litres and 500 litres of water per plant, per watering was still too high.

“Each coffee plant needs only around 350 litres per watering. If everybody uses the right amount of water at the right time, we might have enough during the dry season,” he said.

Saving is a cure and key for a long-term development

Sensing the problem, Nestle Group, in co-operation with the Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation (SDC) launched a 2 million euro (US$2.3 million) private-public- partnership (PPP) project to change the irrigation methods used by local farmers in the Central Highlands region.

The PPP project, which started in April 2015 and will last until 2019, has supported 50,000 families in the Central Highlands region with regular training on how to use water correctly and mix the coffee plantations with other crops to enhance the economic result as well as other agriculture knowledge.

Pham Phu Ngoc, head of Nestle Vietnam’s Central Highlands branch, said they introduced farmers from a well-cost automatic irrigation system to a simple bottle-checked method to help farmers control the amount of water they use.

For example, Ngọc said that by placing a simple plastic bottle upside down on the ground and observing the water level, farmers are able to decide the amount of water they should use and when they should irrigate their crops.

Thu said his coffee output had increased 10 per cent to 12 per cent since he started using Nestle’s plan last year while he used less water. Thu said the no-cost bottle-check method has saved a third on fertilisers that used to be washed away and halved costs of labour, electricity and fuel.

Together with saving water, the project also trains farmer on how to grow either pepper, avocados or durians in their coffee plantation to boost the wetness of the area to serve the coffee trees.

The additional crops also helped increase their income as sometimes the coffee was less profitable than those crops. In the market, pepper prices had tripled in the past five years.

More importantly, it made them bio-diversify in the region, Nestle official Ngọc, who is also a local coffee grower for the last 20 years, said.

Nestle has also been running another project called Nescafe Plan since 2015 to support the sustainable coffee re-cultivation activities by providing farmers in the region with high quality coffee seedlings at 50 per cent discount.

Dinh Dzung, head of corporate affairs and legal of Nestle Vietnam said the firm will support farmers with 11 million seedlings which have been developed by the Central Highlands Agriculture and Forestry Science Institute.

“We will not give free seedlings as we want farmers to spend on the best for them and make it a habit,” Dzung said.

“Good seedlings contribute good coffee, higher quality and prestige for both,” Dũng said. In the last five years, Nestle has bought 200,000 tonnes of coffee per year.

The move is expected to further boost Singapore’s status as a key aviation hub, industry analysts said.

When fully operational by 2019, the 9,250 sq m facility at Seletar Aerospace Park will be Airbus’ fourth and biggest training centre.

The other three are located at its headquarters in Toulouse, France, as well as in Miami and Beijing.

The US$100 million facility in Singapore will eventually have eight full-flight simulators and six fixed cockpit training devices as well as classrooms.

It will have the capacity to train more than 10,000 people a year.

The Airbus-SIA venture adds to other facilities here offering pilot training, namely Singapore Technologies Aerospace’s training arm as well as Haite Singapore Aviation Training Centre.

The Airbus Asia Training Centre is 55 per cent owned by the European plane maker, with the rest owned by SIA. It is a key investment for the airline, said SIA chief executive Goh Choon Phong, and in line with the carrier’s “transformative strategy to go beyond the core business into adjacent areas”.

This is necessary with stiff competition from full-service and low-cost carriers, he said at the facility’s official opening yesterday.

Investing in the training centre provides a good opportunity for SIA to benefit from the growing demand for crew to support the region’s massive aircraft orders. Airbus predicts the Asia-Pacific region will lead demand for new aircraft, with the in-service fleet growing from around 5,600 aircraft today to 14,000 over the next two decades.

To support the expansion, airlines will need to grow crew numbers from more than 65,000 now to almost 170,000.

Airbus’ president and chief executive officer Fabrice Brégier, who was also at the event, said: “The new centre combines the expertise of our two companies to offer the highest standards of training for the growing flight crew population in the Asia-Pacific region.

“One day we will have pilotless aircraft but I can assure you that in the next 20 years, we will make full use of our facility here,” he said.

To date, 17 airlines have signed up for courses at the facility, including Qatar Airways, Vietnam Airlines, Japan Airlines and Cebu Pacific.

Trade and Industry Minister (Industry) S. Iswaran, the chief guest at the event, said the establishment of the centre will create highly skilled jobs, including flight instructors and simulator technicians.

It will also provide new career pathways and opportunities amid Singapore’s industry transformation efforts, he said, citing the example of an SIA pilot who joined the centre after retiring from SIA.

The school has 15 instructors, mainly former SIA pilots. It plans to hire up to 50 by 2019.

On whether the school is a good place for SIA to channel retired pilots, Goh said: “It’s not so much that. It’s really just a natural fit between what the centre needs and the skills that these pilots have.”

Thi Anh Dao, Emerald’s founder and managing director, will serve as managing director of Isobar Vietnam, and Emerald’s 80 employees in HCM City and Nha Trang will become a part of Isobar, which has a presence in 45 markets.

Sven Huberts, managing director of Isobar Asia Pacific, said: “Vietnam is a market full of possibilities, with a young e-commerce sector that is set to grow very rapidly over the next three years as it is being supported by strong fundamentals.

“This is why we are excited to be able to strengthen our presence here and capitalise on this trend with the official launch of Isobar Vietnam.”

The branch is located at AVIC Center on the main street of Futian District which is the economic and commercial centre of Shenzhen. Futian hosts the headquarters of over half the financial enterprises in Shenzhen accounting for 39.1 per cent of the local gross domestic product.

Maybank chairman Megat Zaharuddin Megat Mohd Nor said as at 2014, bilateral trade between China andAsean almost reached US$500 billion and the upgraded bilateral free trade area between the two parties late last year provided an impetus for further regional trade and economic collaboration.

“Building on Maybank’s presence in all the 10 Asean countries as well as India and Pakistan, we are confident that we can differentiate ourselves in contributing to this city’s dominant position as the largest export-import city in China,” he said in a statement.

“As Shenzhen’s economy and businesses continue to gain momentum, our customers will be able to take advantage of our unparalleled regional reach as they look to expand beyond China and vice versa,” Megat said.

The Maybank Shenzhen branch will offer a range of foreign currencies and Renminbi banking services including term loans, bridging loans, project financing, syndication loans, deposits, trade finance, Islamic Finance, bank guarantees and cross-border businesses, among others.

Meanwhile, Maybank International CEO Pollie Sim said that Maybank’s key focus area for the new branch would be on facilitating trade-related transactions given Shenzhen’s proximity to Hong Kong as well as and its status as the most successful special economic zone.

“In 2015, Shenzhen’s GDP totalled US$270 billion, putting it on par with a mid-sized province in terms of total GDP.

“Shenzhen is among the top ranked mainland Chinese cities in terms of comprehensive economic power, with its economic output ranked fourth behind Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou,” she said.

Sim said the Shenzhen branch would complement Maybank’s four other branches in Greater China – namely, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai and Kunming – and further strengthen the group’s franchise in the Greater China region.

“We intend to tap into opportunities arising from Shenzhen’s robust economy and its strong trade flows with Hong Kong and Asean, by leveraging on the Group’s extensive reach and expertise in facilitating cross border transactions,” she added.

“We will therefore focus on customers who have import and export needs whether in Renminbi or other foreign currencies, Chinese enterprises investing abroad especially in Asean and vice versa, as well as mid-to-large scale local enterprises.”

The Maybank Shenzhen branch has a paid-up capital of 300 million yuan (approximately US$46.31 million) and a staff strength of 15.

At the 2nd Inclusive Business Asia Forum led by the Asian Development Bank at its Manila headquarters, Coca-Cola was among the business organizations invited to share their best practices and application of the inclusive business approach into their value chain thru their 5by20 Programme. In 2010, The Coca-Cola Company made a commitment to enable the economic empowerment of 5 million women micro-entrepreneurs across its value chain by year 2020.

The four-day forum, which was attended by about 250 representatives of government, business associations, corporations, and investors from across Asia, showcased how the inclusive business approach is gaining momentum globally and how other stakeholders can replicate it. The forum discussed how the participants, from both private and public sectors, can create an enabling environment for inclusive business which can create jobs and provide relevant services and goods to low-income individuals and communities.

Unlike traditional corporate social responsibility projects, which are primarily philanthropic, the inclusive business approach creates business models that include the marginalised sector.

During the forum, the 5by20 Programme in the Philippines called STAR (Sari-Sari Store Training and Access to Resources) Programme, was presented as one of the case studies along with initiatives from Visa, Fujitsu, and Yes Bank.

In 2011, Coca-Cola Philippines rolled out the STAR Programme in partnership with the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA). The STAR Programme is designed for women micro-entrepreneurs who own and manage sari-sari stores or carinderias. The Programme hopes to address the barriers these women face by helping them achieve business success. The STAR Programme has three components: access to training, access to resources, and access to peer mentoring.

“Coca-Cola is very much part of communities. So if we grow, our growth must be inclusive. This is the reason why we continue to pursue initiatives that has both social and business impact. The STAR Programme is shared value in action. Through our core business of selling Coca-Cola products, we can address one of the key social issues of our time which is women economic empowerment,” said Gilda Maquilan, Sustainability Manager of Coca-Cola and Chairwoman of STAR Programme.

Coca-Cola Philippines also established the STAR Centre for Excellence facility at the TESDA Women’s Center as the centre for innovation to continuously find ways on how to enhance and scale the STAR Programme. The centre also serves as a venue for the training and accreditation of facilitators to be deployed throughout the country. To date, the STAR Programme has 340 accredited facilitators teaching and training women retailers to become better entrepreneurs. The STAR Programme is being implemented in over 47 locations nationwide and has reached more than 52,000 women.

“By showcasing our global 5by20 initiative and the STAR Programme in the Philippines we hope to inspire other companies to follow and include small entrepreneurs or players in their value chain,” Maquilan added.

More than an exchange of the accomplishments of the various companies, the 2nd Inclusive Business Asia Forum aims to inspire the business sector to create business models that are inclusive for the marginalised sector.

The contract was signed recently by the vice president of Bounthan Agriculture Promotion Import-Export Company, Bounlon Silavong, and Hamed Mirlohi, a representative of the Rahnama Trading Company.

Under the agreement, Bounthan Agriculture Promotion Import-Export Company will export about 100 tonnes of processed rubber. “This is the first time that a Lao company has entered into an agreement to sell processed rubber to a Middle Eastern country,” Bounlon said.

“The Rahnama Trading Company signed a contract to buy the rubber from us at the international market price after they found that our product was of good quality.”

Bounlon said the buyer would use the rubber to manufacture tyres, condoms, gloves and other products.

He added that the company plans to buy more rubber from other growers in Laos to meet market demand if the business runs smoothly in the future.

The Bounthan Agriculture Promotion Import-Export Company has 570 hectares of rubber plantations in Champassak province, including 200 hectares that have been planted out by local farmers.

“We can now produce 25 tonnes of processed rubber a day but we plan to expand production to meet the needs of overseas buyers in the future,” Bounlon said.

He noted that in Oudomxay province Chinese investors had helped local farmers to grow rubber after reaching an agreement with provincial authorities.

Under this agreement, the Chinese company provides capital, saplings, fertiliser and farming advice to villagers who then sell the liquid rubber they obtain from their trees to the company.

Rahnama Trading Company is an advanced company that supplies natural and synthetic raw materials, as well as carbon black, to the rubber industry. It began operations in 1994 and today is a leader in the import and export of materials for the rubber industry in Iran.

The company has achieved its high position because of its competitive prices and high quality products. It also provides services in the shortest period of time to bring about customer satisfaction.

SGX also confirmed it has no objection to granting Tiger Airways a waiver of the requirement under Rule 1307 of its Listing Manual that the proposed delisting be approved by shareholders in a general meeting.

The proposed delisting will not affect the listing status of the perpetual convertible capital securities issued by Tiger Airways. These will remain listed on SGX.