The Forbes magazine yesterday recognised Straits Trading’s Chew Gek Khim, Temasek Holdings’ Ho Ching and May Ng, chief executive of Pan-United, among female entrepreneurs and executives who are shaking up things across diverse industries.

Chew is the granddaughter of the late banker Tan Chin Tuan and helmining and smelting firm Straits Trading.

Ho has headed Singapore investment firm Temasek Holdings as it diversified into a global investment powerhouse over the past decade.

Ng of family conglomerate Pan-United oversees the largest cement and ready-mixed concrete company in the region.

China and Hong Kong dominated the list with 14 women, followed by India with eight, Thailand with five and Japan with four. Australia, Indonesia and Vietnam each have three. South Korea and the Philippines each have two. Macau, Taiwan and New Zealand have one each.

Perhaps the most high-profile debut was that of Mrs Nita Ambani, for her rising profile in the Reliance empire run by her husband Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man.

She is instrumental in the marketing and branding strategy of Reliance’s push into mobile services, Forbes said. Her fellow Indians, ICICI bank chief Chanda Kochar and Biocon founder and chairman Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, featured again this year.

A core group of this year’s winners include women from China’s manufacturing sector despite a slowdown in the Asian powerhouse, while a quarter of the 27 new candidates come from the tech world. Among them is Jane Yan who founded Venustech, an Internet security company that clai80 per cent of China’s government and military business. Alibaba co-founder Lucy Peng solidified her position as one of the tech industry’s most powerful executives, with two multibillion-dollar companies under her belt.

Familiar names that have dropped off include Zhang Xin of China’s Soho property company. Singtel Group CEO Chua Sock Koong and KOP Group founder Ong Chih Ching also fell off the list.

The magazine acknowledged the inroads women are making in the business world, but gender inequality persists.

Some airlines are surprised with the high fees, as they thought it was still at a proposal stage when they were briefed by DCA officials last Friday, but it is learnt that the DCA wants to start charging the new fees next week.

The rise would lead up to a ten-fold increase in airlines’ monthly air navigation flight charges (ANFC), which forms the biggest cost item for the usage of DCA services.

Under the revised fee, the bigger the aircraft, the more the cost, and even the smaller jets, cargo planes and helicopters have not been spared.

This will certainly eat into the airlines’ bottomlines and potentially lead to higher airfares. Airlines may also impose miscellaneous charges in a bid to pass on the higher cost to travellers.

“The rise is too drastic and too fast,” said an airline executive.

He said the worst hit by this new charges would be airlines like AirAsia, Malaysia Airlines and Malindo Air that have several hundred domestic flights per week. These airlines did not respond to queries from The Star.

Based on the briefing given to the airlines, the ANFC charges will rise from five sen per nautical mile now to 50 sen for lightweight aircraft. For the bigger birds (the A320/A330 and B737/B777), the cost will rise from RM1-RM2.50 per nautical mile from 10-25 sen now, and the super jumbo A380 will see charges swelling to RM3 from 30 sen now. The minimum charges will be raised from RM5 to RM50 per nautical mile.

As for the AOC, which is a vital document for airlines to fly, the initial approval fees will balloon to RM80,000 yearly from RM400 now for mid-sized aircraft, and yearly renewals will rise from RM400 to RM30,000.

Pilots who have to be licensed to fly will have to fork out RM500 for their initial flight crew licence and RM300 for yearly renewals from RM100 and RM60 now.

“If an airline is paying RM120,000 a month now in ANFC fees, its bill will rise to RM1.2mil a month depending on aircraft type and frequency.

“Similarly, flights to East Malaysia, a high-frequency route, will cost airlines more from a mere RM160-RM176 for 800 nautical miles now for the KL-to-Kota Kinabalu route to RM1,600-RM1,760 when the new charges come into effect, although it depends on aircraft type and frequency,” said an airline executive.

Some airlines are unhappy with the new charges, but DCA director-general Datuk Seri Azharuddin Abdul Rahman when contacted by StarBiz yesterday said “they have to understand that our expenses for delivery of services is going up as well. We have to upgrade our systems, maintain and replace them as we want to give them the best.

“Hence, we have to charge a bit. In any case, there has not been a revision in the pricing since 1970 and it costs us money to provide the services,” he said.

But some airlines feel that they are already spending a lot to bring tourists into the country.

“This new fees will make us less competitive. The fees are higher than that of Singapore and even Thailand, and we cannot compare the new pricing with that of Australia and New Zealand, as there they are much more efficient,” said another airline executive.

He added that “while we agree to a certain percentage rise, it cannot be 1,000%. The DCA will need to review its rates”.

Azharuddin said: “If you look at the statistics, we are still the lowest in the world, and even if we increase the fees, it will still be lower compared to some other countries in this region.”

He said the DCA had spent RM1.41bil to build infrastructure and systems to deliver an efficient air traffic management system. The new KL air traffic control centre (ATCC), expected to be operational by 2018/2019, is costing the DCA RM650mil, he said.

For future upgrades, the DCA needs about RM550mil to upgrade the new Kota Kinabalu ATCC and for other system upgrades elsewhere in the country.

“Yearly, we are spending about RM125mil just on maintenance, and that is why we need to raise our rates. We are essentially building a new ATCC for the benefit of the airlines,” Azharuddin added.

The region is expected to yield 10.94 million tonnes of paddy from the crop, down by 186,144 tonnes over the same period last year.

Professor Nguyen Hong Son, director of the rice research institute, said that rice output from the winter-spring crop fell by 10-15 per cent, but localities plan to increase the cultivation area for the autumn-winter crop by 200,000ha. Thus, there will be no shortage of rice exports.

Nguyen Van Tam, director of Kien Giang Province’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, said the provincial authority set a target of 4.7 million tonnes of rice this year. Due to drought and saltwater, its rice output had fallen by over 200,000 tonnes compared to its plan.

To compensate for the fallen output, the provincial agricultural sector would increase the cultivation area for the autumn-winter rice crop by 30,000ha to 120,000ha, he said.

At a recent meeting to review the winter-spring rice crop and set tasks for the next crop organised by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, delegates agreed that with localities increasing rice cultivation areas, the damage level of the winter-spring crop would not have a great impact on rice supply sources for export.

Rice prices up

A fall in output has increased rice prices in the region. In Can Tho City, for example, farmers have harvested all cultivation areas of the winter-spring crop of 87,000ha.

Currently, a kilo of dried IR50404 paddy costs VND5,800-5,900 (26.3-26.8 US cents) , while jasmine rice is priced VND6,700-6,800, up VND500-VND700 compared to the beginning of the crop.

Despite higher rice prices, most farmers do not have rice to sell since they harvested and sold their fresh paddy right at the field.

Many of them had even received deposits from traders to sell their rice at the beginning of the crop at much lower prices.

Nguyen Thanh Son, a farmer in Hau Giang Province’s Phung Hiep District, said rice prices were unstable in previous years, with farmers even unable to sell their rice.

At the beginning of this winter-spring crop, Son and other farmers received deposits from traders to sell rice. Because the price increased strongly at the end of the crop, now the farmers have regrets.

With current price of VND5,400 per kilo of fresh paddy in the field, VND1,000 higher than in the beginning of the crop, Son’s family lost VND5 million ($227) of profit from one-ha rice field.

Le Cong Ly, a rice trader in Dong Thap Province’s Cao Lanh District, said rice prices in Can Tho and Vinh Long had also increased.

Many traders came to newly cultivated paddy fields for the summer-autumn crop in Hau Giang, Dong Thap and An Giang provinces to place orders to buy rice, he said.

Professor Vo Tong Xuan said the agricultural sector should quickly apply measures to cut production costs to benefit farmers and improve the competitiveness of Vietnamese rice in the world market

The government had set the average production cost for a kilo of rice at VND3,800, but farmers had been spending VND3,500-4,000 to produce each kilo of rice, he said.

The first area will survey the number of production workshops and labourers, and assess the labour structure-production scale.

The second will provide data on the shift in rural economic structures and rural social-economic infrastructure.

And the last will investigate living conditions among rural residents and job training in the countryside.

Nguyen Thi Huong, director of the Agricultural-Forestry and Aquaculture Statistics Department, said this year’s census will investigate all households that participate in production workshops in cities and urban areas, as well as production units in military zones.

The Census aims to build up databases on agriculture and rural development, serving as a tool for long-term research.

The survey’s results also serve as an important and reliable source for establishing a database system for the General Statistics Office of Viet Nam.

The 2016 Census’s preliminary results will be finalised in December and the official results will be made public in the third quarter of 2017.

According to the Census’s steering committee, data on the economy and society – especially within rural, agriculture and aquaculture sectors – serves an indispensable tool for the Party, National Assembly, Government and other agencies while forming policies and development plans.