Pua slams govt’s ‘hare-brained’ luxury property freeze

PETALING JAYA: Tony Pua has called out the government for its “hare-brained” policy and lack of coherent response to the recent report by Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) on the property glut.

The Petaling Jaya Utara MP was referring to the BNM report on Nov 17 which highlighted the mismatch in supply and demand of property developments in Malaysia.

“The knee-jerk reaction to the alarming report was the announcement two days later by Second Finance Minister Johari Abdul Ghani that the government had issued a directive temporarily stopping developments of shopping malls, commercial complexes and condominiums valued above RM1 million from Nov 1.

“One can tell that it was a hare-brained policy attempt because the day after, Works Minister Fadillah Yusof said that the directive was not a blanket freeze and that approvals would be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

“Johari then added, on Nov 21, that the freeze would only affect projects that had not been approved and the length of the freeze would depend on a continued assessment of the situation,” Pua said in a statement.

The DAP national publicity secretary added that no one in the government responded by looking at the cause of the problem.

“The question is, how did the government allow the situation to develop to such a state of gross mismatch in the first place?

“We call upon the finance minister to provide not only clarity to the hare-brained ‘temporary ban’ decision but also to justify how such a ban will actually solve the ‘supply-demand imbalances’ in our property sector,” Pua said.

In a statement on its website last week, BNM said the pricing of residential properties at above RM250,000 is the main reason for this oversupply as most Malaysians cannot afford them.

“There were 130,690 unsold units at the end of March this year, with 83% priced at above RM250,000. Also, 61% of the unsold units are high-rise apartments.

“Supply-demand imbalances in the property market have increased since 2015. Unsold residential properties are at a decade high, with the majority of unsold units being in the above RM250,000 price category,” BNM said.

However, Pua said this was not the first time such a report had been released by the central bank.

“Actually, the issue of imbalances in the property market was already highlighted by BNM in its 2015 annual report. And the oversupply in the housing market has since then almost doubled between 2015 and 2017,” he said. -FMT