Trapped By Development (Email)

Today was a field day for me as I was in two meetings, walked an entire mall and several streets of Penang.

The activities that I was in or witness to, they made me feel disheartened about the way of life in Penang and of things to come.

In the months to come I will be seeking out new people who are particularly interested in what I am fond of, which is to see to good changes in Penang.

What I mean as good changes is not purely on monetary value but also on providing societal transformation street by street.

The Penang’s economies are not recession proof. Part of the reasons for bad economies comes from poor co-operative planning where people continue to work on developments individually.

Belleview recently announced its plan to launch a new upmarket shopping mall in the heart of Georgetown, with some 600,000 sq. ft. of lettable area. This comes on top of the Paragon Mall (Hunza), the Gurney Plaza’s new wing (CapitaRetail), Penang Time Square (Ivory Prop.) and then there is D’Piazza Mall at Bayan Baru that claims 89 out of 90 units 3-storey shoplots have been snapped up but now open for leasing by Henry Butcher. Then, there is the unaccounted for Penang Global City Centre.

So, if we are talking about some 15,000,000 sq ft of retail space, which is 3 times the size of the new 1 Utama plus IKEA and all else, can Penang and other states business owners have sufficient capital to rent or buy up shop-lots and then run a successful retail business?

If yes, then working out on a 1,000 sq ft per unit per business, my advisory firm may get a chance to perhaps advise a percentage of the 15,000 business owners. Wow.

In the best interest of Penang and its people, I am thinking of getting good people to sit, discuss and draw up plans which can be presented to the State Government and interested parties on developing industries in Penang. Although big businesses had come out to say that sentiment in consumer sector can help to sustain the industry, those that are interviewed are giants, such as Carrefour, F&N, Nestle, Poh Kong, BAT and Pelikan whose businesses do not rely on local market to succeed.

Whether it’s a retail, a financial bank, a SME or a stock broking firm to try to survive tomorrow; advisory and research companies located far away from Penang, predicting good growth potential should go down to the streets on a Tuesday.

The Government’s initiative to relax the EPF Account 2 to stimulate consumer spending on consumable (retail) and non-consumable good (property), which led our Bank Negara to imply that there are RM31 billion extra to spend, has all the tale of property development by the affordable. The 2 million people in the whole of Penang will not categoretically spend that bit and definitely not going to buy 5 shop-lots and make into a single business.

What is presented here is a challenge. For us, the thinkers, to continue to make Penang attractive since we will be here for a while. (I was more impressed by the trishaws in the hutongs, China than dirty state of trishaws taking our tourists around Penang).

Do let me know if we have common interests.

Best regards,

Erasmus