KUALA LUMPUR, July 7 — The affirmation of Malaysia’s credit rating by Standard and Poor’s (S&P) last week demonstrates its confidence in Malaysia’s positive economic outlook, strong institutional profile, sound economic fundamentals and prudent debt management.

In a statement today, the Ministry of Finance (MoF) welcomed S&P Global Ratings’ affirmation of Malaysia’s issuer credit rating at A- with a stable outlook last week.

Minister Lim Guan Eng said the reaffirmation also shows that the increase in the government’s direct debt does not affect Malaysia’s sovereign credit ratings, especially when the government’s overall debt and liabilities have been reduced.

He said one of the key drivers for the rating was Malaysia’s healthy growth prospect.

Additionally, despite the ongoing trade war between China and the United States, Malaysia’s exports have been rising above expectations for the second straight month due to trade diversions.

In May 2019, exports grew 2.5 per cent to RM84.1 billion from RM82.1 billion a year ago, which is above the 2.2 per cent market consensus as compiled by Bloomberg.

As a result of the continuous export growth, trade surplus for the first five months of 2019 rose by 4.3 per cent to RM56.8 billion, compared with RM 54.5 billion in the same period last year.

Approved foreign direct investment (FDI) across all sectors for the first quarter of 2019 rose 73.4 per cent to RM29.3 billion versus RM16.9 billion a year ago.

The growth was driven by a 127 per cent increase in approved manufacturing FDI, which rose to RM20.2 billion from RM8.9 billion a year ago.

“S&P acknowledges the government’s efforts to restore its finances through rigorous fiscal management, including managing overall debt and liabilities.

“Although the government’s direct debt rose to 51.2 per cent of the gross domestic product in 2018 from 50.1 per cent in 2017, it is only one component of the government’s overall debt and liabilities,” said Lim.

He added that other components were committed government guarantees and finance leases, as well as other liabilities including the 1MDB debt which the government was compelled to service directly.

The recently established Debt Management Committee would build on these successes and ensure that the government’s debt management practices are in line with global best practices, he said.

“Furthermore, the Pakatan Harapan administration has made great strides in combating corruption, an institutional reform that is seen as a credit positive, on top of the country’s economic stability and strong financial institutions,” added Lim. — Bernama

ISKANDAR PUTERI: Eighty-eight housing developers in Johor have been imposed penalties between 2016 and 2018 for failing to complete the state’s affordable housing projects under Rumah Mampu Biaya Johor (RMBJ).

State Housing, Communications and Multimedia Committee chairman Dzulkefly Ahmad said 41 of these developers were in Johor Bahru district, followed by 13 in Kulai, eight in Segamat, seven in Batu Pahat, six in Kluang, five in Kota Tinggi, four in Muar and two each in Tangkak and Pontian.

“Under the previous state government, the penalty was between RM20,000 and RM60,000 per unit.

“Based on the new policy, approved last year, the new charge is RM40,000 per unit for a lump-sum payment and RM60,000 per unit if paid in four instalments over two years,” he told the state assembly sitting here today.

He was replying to a supplementary question from Yeo Tung Siong (PH-Pekan Nenas), who requested for the list of developers who were charged penalties for failing to complete the RMBJ projects between 2013 and 2019.

In a related development, he said since April 1, housing developers are no longer allowed to swap lots for Bumiputera houses, based on a resolution in the newly-enforced Bumiputera Property Policy.

He said this in response to a supplementary question from Andrew Chan (PH-Stulang), who wanted to know whether housing developers could still swap Bumiputera lots after the Bumiputera lot distribution process had been approved.

Wimbledon has unleashed a new lightweight app to try and hook the growing tennis-loving market in Asia, while AI-generated highlights are getting smarter at spotting the most exciting action.

The official Wimbledon app is packed with heavy graphics but the new, slimmed-down alternative is designed for fans in places with poorer bandwidth and older smartphones – especially India.

The prestigious tennis tournament reckons it can potentially reach several hundred million people in India who are interested in the championships but can only download data over slow mobile phone networks.

The slimmer app has lightweight scores, results, headlines and the order of play.

“India is one of the largest social media audiences for them globally,” said Sam Seddon, IBM’s client executive for Wimbledon.

“That’s the nirvana fan base.”

Wimbledon is also producing a Chinese scoreboard that can be embedded into websites in a bid to reach a bigger Chinese audience.

AI learning to improve

Every single shot at Wimbledon is logged by US technology giants IBM, with up to 180 staff capturing 4.8 million bits of information.

Their statisticians have been refining their artificial intelligence-generated video clips.

By monitoring a mixture of crowd noise, match analysis of key moments such as breakpoints and player reactions, an overall excitement factor is produced for each passage of play.

But IBM has detected inadvertent bias in the AI system, which this year it has managed to iron out.

Seddon gave the example of a three-hour epic match on Centre Court.

“The place is full and everyone is screaming and cheering,” he said.

Once it finishes, people step out for a breather.

“It doesn’t matter who comes on next, the crowd noise will be different,” Seddon explained.

“Same court, same high-profile players, same high quality of tennis, but the highlights could be inadvertently treated differently.”

Statistically capturing excitement

The AI system has this year learnt how to recognise ball strikes so clips can automatically be trimmed to when a point starts.

Last year, the AI highlights garnered more than 14 million video views.

Despite the buzz generated by 15-year-old qualifier Coco Gauff, Roger Federer’s army of adoring fans, and fiery Nick Kyrgios’s clash with Rafael Nadal, the clips from those matches did not top the overall excitement factor rankings from the first week of the championships.

Statistically, the highest-ranking point, at 0.97 out of 1.00, was China’s Zhang Shuai securing victory over former world number one Caroline Wozniacki, sinking to her knees with a double fist-pump, having come back from 0-4 down in the first set.

Big screen vote

Wimbledon is seeking to bring together as much digital information as it can on the 40,000-odd daily visitors to the complex in southwest London, in order to deliver a better fan experience.

Signing in with the official app, ground pass ticket-holders watching the big show court action on the giant screen can vote for which match they want to be shown.

“There’s a value return in providing your data, to help Wimbledon understand more about user interests,” said Seddon.

“It’s been really interesting for them to understand what their fans on Henman Hill want to see.”

Spectators have plumped for the big name players and British favourites that might have been anticipated, but have also voted for some more unexpected choices.

In the future, fans should be able to access more personalised highlights on their smartphones.

Need for speed

Seddon said the fan demand for immediacy in consuming sport was driving changes in the entertainment industry.

“Sport is becoming the cutting edge of the media industry, and AI is a component of the cutting edge,” he explained.

“You can watch your box sets whenever you want. Sport is an in-the-moment experience.

“The challenge for the sports business is: ‘who are my fans, what are they consuming?’

“And if you’ve got the data, how do you structure it to drive insights? That’s the hard bit.”

KUALA LUMPUR, July 7 — Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman has invited former Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin to join Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia, urging the latter to abandon the far-right views growing within the Umno-PAS partnership.

The head of Bersatu’s Youth wing made the open invitation to Khairy on Twitter yesterday in response to a news report of the Umno leader expressing support for PPBM chairman Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s suggestion that Malay politicians unite under his party.

“As Umno-PAS steer further to the right, it’s timely for Bersatu to position itself as the centrist party for the Malays,” he wrote on Twitter.

“I would like to invite Khairy to join Bersatu. Join the likes of Tun, [Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, Datuk Seri Mukhriz Mahathir and Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed]. Together, we can move Malaysia forward.”

At the Johor Bersatu Aidilfitri Open House on Friday, Dr Mahathir invited all Malay political parties including Umno to join Bersatu to consolidate the community’s political power.

Dr Mahathir asserted that the number of rival Malay political parties have resulted in the cannibalisation of the Malay community’s electoral support.

Yesterday, Khairy reportedly called for the community to view Dr Mahathir’s remarks positively, saying the latter’s intentions were noble.