Inter-Research And Studies (IRAS)

Malaysia has faced its steepest inflation rate hike in 20 months, mainly caused by the fuel subsidy cut in September which increased pump price by 20 sen per litre, Maybank Investment Bank (IB) has said. The research house also predicted that inflation rate will likely accelerate next year compared to 2013, as a result of the recent sugar subsidy cut announced in Budget 2014 last week. In its daily report released here yesterday, Maybank IB said that inflation in September 2013 was up by 2.6 per cent year-on-year, its highest so far this year. It also said that “transport” was the main factor in the hike as it went up 4.6 per cent year-on-year, after the pump price of RON95 petrol and diesel went up in September 3, and RON97 petrol two days later. As a result, it expected that inflation rate will pick up from 2 per cent this year to between 3 and 3.5 per cent next year. “The forecasts reflect the combined impact of the 14 per cent hike in cigarette prices on 1 Oct 2013, the...

By Nesrine Malik "Allah" means God, unless you are a non-Muslim Malaysian, in which case you have to find another word. After a recent court ruling in the country, Allah can now be used only to refer to the Muslim God, and non-Muslims (mainly the Malaysian Christian Catholic community and press) have been banned from using it. It is a decision that has inflamed opinion among minority religions and disheartened Muslims. Apart from all the practical implications of this (re-printing Bibles and so on), there are other intangible but more heartfelt grievances. At first glance it looks like a petty scuffle over semantics, but the roots of the dispute go deep into the issue of national identity. The ruling was flimsily justified by the "risk" of conversion. Announcing the change, the judge said: "It is my judgment that the possible and most probable threat to Islam, in the context of this country, is the propagation of other religions to the followers of Islam....

By Waleed Aly Six years ago, Proton - Malaysia's national car maker - teamed up with carmakers in Iran and Turkey pledging to develop the world's first ''Islamic car''. Apparently automobiles had hitherto been non-Muslims. If that's not absurd enough, this week we learnt it's a good thing Malaysian cars can't talk, because if they could, they'd no longer be able to use the word ''Allah'' to mean ''God''. That's what a Malaysian appeal court ruled this week, after a Catholic, Malay-language newspaper had dared to drop the A-bomb. The ''Allah'' controversy has been running for years, and isn't over yet. This decision overturned the original finding from 2009 in favour of the newspaper. Now the editor is planning to appeal to the highest court in the country and the government will resist. This immediately reminded me of Proton's Islamic car: strip both these stories of ...

More than 60% of Malaysian workers felt that they were not spending enough time with their families due to long working hours, a survey by online recruitment firm Jobstreet.com revealed. Nearly three-quarters of those surveyed said that they worked extra hours daily – two to five hours beyond their scheduled time to leave the office. Overtime was inevitable, due to unreasonable deadlines and work overload, resulting in nearly 75% choosing to stay late at the office. Most of the respondents, however, complained that they were not paid for the extra hours. More than 60% felt that their employers were not interested in ensuring a work-life balance. One respondent said, "Even if my company has work-life balance initiatives such as a gym, a chill-out area and other organised social activities, it's there in place just for show. "We don’t have sufficient manpower to sustain the workload.” And bosses, apparently, do not leave their employees alone when they are...

Certainly, the 13th general election, held on May 5th, was Malaysia's most closely contested since the country’s independence from Britain in 1957. Yet it still produced the same result as at every election since 1957—victory for the Barisan Nasional (BN), a political coalition dominated by prime minister Najib Razak’s United Malays National Organisation (UMNO). This despite the fact that the BN only won a historically low 47% of the popular vote, against the main opposition party’s 51%. Such disparities between the tangible evidence of popular sentiment and the apparently inevitable final result have forced many to question the integrity of Malaysia’s electoral system—not just now but after previous elections as well. Indeed, a whole new organisation called Bersih (meaning “clean” in Malaysian) was set up in 2006 to campaign for “clean and fair elections”. It has held three large rallies over the years in the capital Kuala Lumpur to press the government, and in particular the g...