Our neighboring country Philippines announced a 7.8% jump in Q1 2013 GDP.

All Southeast Asian countries seem to be doing quite well.

Singapore and Malaysia are underperforming.

Intereting things for we Malaysians:

In Philippines, it is a normal culture for youth after their college or pre-college (>21 years old) to leave home and find work in Manila or Cebu, mainly in the BPO industry (shared services and call centres). These youths have huge appetite for renting apartments - they normally do not have such thing as terrace home. Hence, rental market is very high in demand. It is also Filipino culture to pay rental ahead or sometimes 1 year of rental in advance instead of making downpayments to buy new home. Most of the new homes are bought by Filipinos working overseas as Philippines have the highest remittances economy (working abroad and transferring their earnings into home country, nowadays they buy property in Manila) in the world with about US$25 billion receipt last year beating any need for FDI or liberalising the economy.

Corruption and mismanagement are still key issues but they believe Philippines' GDP of about US$250 billion is on track to beat their nearest peer Singapore and Malaysia.

tikaram,

Thanks for sharing this here.

I have most of my FDs with BRakyat and now this concerns me. I don't understand what is the problem mentioned in the report. Hope that you can help to clarify what is the problem mentioned in the report.

My lay person's understanding is, they have many personal loans and thus higher non performing loan potential. But my view is, these lenders are mainly govt servants and thus secured incomes for the loans.

Or something more serious?

Thanks.

Our concept of terrace is inherited from British and non-Commonwealth countries have different concepts on landed homes.

Supply lesser? Manila easily got 2-3x more supply than us. Check out their latest project, alot of city apartments are small-szed in over 50-storey towers. http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=302340

Transformation plans? Well, in Manila, there are plans to build 10 casinos to sustain their economic growth especially in boosting real estate. Joseph Estrada, a  believed to be corrupted leader, was recently elected as Mayor of Manila.

The fact that in ASEAN forums, most other ASEANers laugh at Malaysia for making a big noise about our transformation and anti-corruption plans when in fact our growth is lower than them.

Accordingly, they mentioned that it is about bringing vibrancy to the economy and matters like corruption should not be prioritised for the sake of economy. No doubt, this is a developing world mindset.

Why I believe what's happening in the region is very important for us to know.

Kuala Lumpur real estate is fighting for the same tourist profile, same foreign investors and same hoteliers and retailers across the region. Our out-of-ASEAN tourist arrival is not very high if you take out all visits from ASEAN: Singapore 14m, Indonesia 2m, Thailand 1m, Philippines and Vietnam: 1m. Almost 18 million out of 25 million are from ASEAN.

What's happening in neighboring capital cities definitely poised a competition to KL.

Bangkok - big in hospitality and retail industry, the abundance of out-of-ASEAN travellers both the budget and rich ones
Jakarta - to go all big in luxury shopping, widely known as the new Shanghai of luxury retailers
Manila - to go all big in casino, casino, casino and BPO

Kuala Lumpur - what is our niche? well, KL is trying to steal some business from Singapore, a city that is beyond our league as of now (>720 financial institutions are operating in Singapore with less than 100 in KL)

I wouldn't even want to say these cultural things because many expats that lived in Malaysia actually mentioned we are not entirely Truly Asia like what we wanted. Most times all they see is Chinese makan with Chinese, Malay makan with Malay and Indian makan with Indian. No matter how much we deny it.

Big news in our neighboring country:

FOOD!

Bloody Gahmen too stupid to manage this nation however.

come come lets promote msia dish to other country! anyone want to join me?  We can invest on this !

And btw our satay, curry chicken, mee goreng, char kway teow, roast chicken rice, fried popiah, pak chang kai (nasi ayam hailam), curry mee, roti canai (or famously called pratha), chapati, murtabak, teh tarik, cannot be considered as Malaysian in overseas as too many countries are claiming them...

The real Malaysian is nasi lemak, asam laksa, rojak and rojak mee, nasi kandar, etc.

Interesting to note that when I was in Australian college residences, some of the ignorant Aussies thought Satay was from Thailand because our college served with Chicken Skewed with Thai Chilli Sauce. Satay is originally from Indonesia - same as batik, some of the joget dances, etc.

Malaysia = halal beer la....

then what attract them? Property?

that one from India lo