The Wire said the official was summoned to the ministry on Saturday (Dec 21), one day after the ministry issued a statement saying that Dr Mahathir’s statement was factually incorrect and told him not to comment on India’s internal affairs.

A source said the Malaysian High Commission official was told that “such remarks are neither in keeping with accepted diplomatic practice of non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, nor with the state of our bilateral relations”.

“It was also conveyed that such remarks are both ill-informed and insensitive.

“Malaysia was asked to take a long-term and strategic view of the bilateral relations,” added sources quoted by the Wire.

Dr Mahathir had said that the law was regrettable as it was discriminatory to Muslims.

The Prime Minister said he was sorry to see India, a secular state, acting to deprive some Muslims of citizenship.

“Already people are dying because of this law, so why is there a necessity to do this thing when all this while, for 70 years almost, they have lived together as citizens without any problems?

“If we do that here, you know what will happen.

“There will be chaos, there will be instability and everyone will suffer,” he told reporters after visiting the media centre during the Kuala Lumpur Summit on Friday (Dec 21).

India’s parliament recently passed a law offering citizenship to non-Muslim migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

It allows fast-track citizenship for religious minorities, including Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from the three neighbouring countries.

However, it does not mention those of Islamic faith.

As a result, there have been violent demonstrations all over the country.

A few months ago, Dr Mahathir had also ruffled feathers in India for his comments on the situation in Kashmir.

That experience encouraged him to join Extinction Rebellion (XR) Indonesia, a social movement concerned with climate issues, and took part in its Rebellion Week march along Jl. Sudirman in Central Jakarta on Oct. 13. “We spend billions to find life on other planets, but trillions on killing life on earth,” read a sign carried by Reinaldi on the march.

“I have the same vision as XR Indonesia to save Planet Earth,” said Reinaldi, when asked why he wanted to participate in XR Indonesia’s campaign.

XR Indonesia, established in July 2019, is the first social movement to demand the government declare a climate emergency and to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2025 because the earth has already reached a point of crisis.

“We are facing a climate crisis,” XR Indonesia national coordinator Defio Nandi told The Jakarta Post recently. He added that the government’s plan to tackle the crisis was not enough.

XR Indonesia’s climate-crisis claims refer to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Global Warming of 1.5 Degrees Celsius report, which implies that the earth will face catastrophic risks if its temperature rises above 2 degrees Celsius, or 1.5 degrees Celsius best-case scenario, by 2030 from the pre-industrial level. The earth’s temperature has risen by 1 degree Celsius since the Industrial Revolution.

Referring to the IPCC’s report, senior manager for forest and climate of the World Resource Institute (WRI) Arief Wijaya agreed that Indonesia was facing a climate crisis.

“If the temperature rises beyond 2 degrees Celsius, the impact will be catastrophic on the earth and humans,” Arief told the Post, adding that there would be extreme disasters such as uncertain harvests, forest fires, extreme heat, rising sea levels and El Nino climate phenomenon.

Such catastrophes can be avoided if the earth’s temperature is kept below 1.5 degrees Celsius. “We only have 11 years until 2030 to avoid [the catastrophic damage],” Arief said.

Indonesia has committed to keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius, or 1.5 degrees Celsius under the 2015 Paris Agreement, reducing its emissions unconditionally by 29 percent and conditionally by 41 percent from the business-as-usual scenario by 2030 as the country’s nationally determined contribution (NDC).

However, Defrio said that even Indonesia’s NDC was not enough to solve the climate crisis. This is supported by the IPCC’s report, which showed that the Paris Agreement’s pathway would not prevent the temperature from rising above 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Acknowledging the situation, XR Indonesia argues that the government needs to declare a climate emergency in order to bring about climate policy reform.

However, the Environment and Forestry Ministry’s climate change management director-general, Ruandha Agung Sugardiman, said that declaring a climate emergency would not make any sudden changes in the government or among the public. He said that Indonesia should instead focus on raising public awareness about climate issues, adding that the demands for development of the country remained high.

Environment director of the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) Medrilzam added that the current climate situation had yet to reach a point of crisis. “We are in a climate crisis when we reach dreadful and unlivable conditions,” he said. “We have not reached that stage yet.”

Bappenas has published the Low Carbon Development Indonesia (LCDI) report that outlines policy plans to reduce its emissions. By utilizing its natural resources sustainably as well as reducing its carbon and energy intensity, the plan expects the country’s greenhouse gas emissions to be reduced by 43 percent.

Indonesia’s carbon dioxide emissions were 543 million tons in 2018, according to the 2019 BP Statistical Review of World Energy. It was an increase of 5.2 percent, from 516.1 million tons in 2017. Indonesia alone shared 1.6 percent of the total world’s emissions in 2018. In the 2007–2017 period, the country’s emissions growth was 2.9 percent.

In 2011, several provinces set targets for their emissions reduction by 2020. East Java, for example, planned to reduce carbon emissions by 37.4 percent, Bengkulu by 10 percent and South Sulawesi by 46 percent. But the three provinces have exceeded their emission targets since 2014, according to data from the WRI.

In one of its policy plans, the LCDI aims to advance the transition to renewable sources of energy and away from coal. Upping the share of renewable energy from 8 percent in 2018 to 23 percent in 2030 and 30 percent in 2045.

The government needs to provide incentives to attract investment in renewable energy, Defrio said. “This is an effective top-down approach.” (dfr/mfp)

“I believe, in the slowdown, regulatory uncertainty has played a role. That’s another factor that needs to be addressed. It’s important for India to take up reforms but to be able to do this with greater clarity and greater certainty would help,” Gopinath said at an event here in the national capital.

The IMF Chief Economist said that although reforms are important for an economy, they should come with clarity and certainty on the policies and regulations.

“Economies need reforms and they are important but there also needs to be an environment of regulatory certainty, which is the clear rules of the game, what the particular policies are and how it impacts you. There has to be clarity on that,” she said at industry chamber FICCI’s 92nd Annual Convention.

Gopinath further pointed out the opacity and confusion caused by India’s biggest tax reform, the Goods and Services Tax (GST), she said that more needs to be done to bring clarity and certainty regarding the regulations and tax rates.

“GST, which has been very important for formalising the Indian economy, but again there… certainly more needs to be done on what the rules are, what the rates are going to be…”

On her recent announcement that the IMF may sharply revise India’s growth outlook for the current fiscal, she said that some high frequency indicators do not show an increase in India’s growth in the third and fourth quarters as was anticipated earlier.

“Our expectation was that the first two quarters of fiscal 2019-20 would be a slowing scenario and then there would be an uptick in the third and fourth quarter. Looking at some of the high frequency indicators we are not seeing the kind of uptick we were projecting, so this is why I mentioned that we will be revising the numbers again in January.”

The plant is being planned in Techno Park Poi Pet, in Cambodia’s Banteay Meanchey province.

Naoto Sugita, the business park’s deputy managing director, told NNA News that TYO’s wholly owned, Poipet-based subsidiary Techno Park Poi Pet Pvt Corp had signed a contract with Japanese-Cambodian venture Sanco

Cambo Investment Group Corp, which operates a special economic zone (SEZ) in Poipet, to build the facility.

According to the report, TYO is set to complete construction of the 8,000-square-metre factory in Techno Park Poi Pet – four hours from Bangkok – in August next year.

The investment amount was not disclosed.

Official Council for the Development of Cambodia (CDC) data shows there were 141 Japanese investment projects in Cambodia as of September, with US$2.5 billion in capital investment.

Of these, 66 are located in SEZs with an estimated capital investment of $340 million, according to the CDC.

Cambodia Chamber of Commerce vice-president Lim Heng, an investor in several rental warehouses and factories, said the move was indicative of the increased demand to invest in Cambodia’s manufacturing sector.

Heng told The Post that a growing number of investors from China, South Korea and Japan had sought out Cambodia as a manufacturing base to export automotive parts, consumer electronics and other goods for the global market.

“The high demand for rental factories has increased rental prices to $2.50 per square metre, up from $1.80 last year,” he said.

Poipet has become an increasingly attractive destination for Japanese firms who are struggling with rising wages in Thailand.

The new rental factory is to provide other services such as logistics, staffing, education and customs clearance.

TYO said it may build a third facility in Cambodia if there is the demand.

In 2016, TYO built its first rental factory in Techno Park, where five other firms also produce automotive and electrical components and other goods.