ADUN SPEAKS | Tourism Ministry should unfreeze Malaysia My Second Home
ADUN SPEAKS | On Nov 2, the Tourism, Arts, and Culture Minister announced that Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H) will not be cancelled but is frozen temporarily to avoid disappointing applicants while renewing and devising conditions in the pandemic.
However, this process of revaluation has now gone on for about four months (Aug 4, 2020) with no standing from the ministry. Their inability to make a decision has hit existing business and limited the spurring of the economy during this difficult time.
About one-third of consultants and agents for the MM2H programme will likely close their business in three months. The companies have expressed their concerns about not being able to last for more than three months and this is worrying.
Although the minister has said that the freezing was due to the pandemic, the MM2H program actually...
ADUN SPEAKS | On Nov 2, the Tourism, Arts, and Culture Minister announced that Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H) will not be cancelled but is frozen temporarily to avoid disappointing applicants while renewing and devising conditions in the pandemic.
However, this process of revaluation has now gone on for about four months (Aug 4, 2020) with no standing from the ministry. Their inability to make a decision has hit existing business and limited the spurring of the economy during this difficult time.
About one-third of consultants and agents for the MM2H programme will likely close their business in three months. The companies have expressed their concerns about not being able to last for more than three months and this is worrying.
Although the minister has said that the freezing was due to the pandemic, the MM2H program actually brings no Covid-19 threat to the country. Successful applicants will undergo a 10 or 14-day quarantine after flying in and follow all SOPs that any Malaysians returning to the country would.
Being long-term residents of the country, their risk of contributing to the increase in Covid-19 numbers is almost equivalent to existing residents in Malaysia.
In addition, records have shown that the applications and approvals have been halted for the program since the end of 2019 before the pandemic hit. Representatives of the Malaysian My Second Home Consultants Association (MM2HCA) say 90 percent of the applications they submitted between September and November 2019 were rejected without any reasons or justifications. That pre-2019 rejection rate had hovered around 10 percent.
So why is the government freezing one of the world’s most successful and largest investment migration programmes? Since its inception in 2002 to 2019, the program has brought in RM40 billion to the economy. Freezing the program is almost like killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
As we are talking about high-net-worth individuals seeking a retirement home or a place to start afresh, unfreezing this program will help with the rental and property market that has taken a significant hit from the pandemic and cure property overhang.
It is not just the property market that will see benefits from this, but the overall economy from the influx of foreign currency that comes with the migration of rich expatriates from around the world.
More so now, at a time when the rising Covid cases in Europe and the USA may push the upper-income retirees who were leaning on migration to a warmer climate to take the plunge and do so.
At a time when we are battling a slump in the economy due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we should do everything we can to grow the domestic economy, including reopening MM2H entries, rather than freezing out an economic opportunity.
With this, I strongly urge the ministry of tourism, arts, and culture to unfreeze the MM2H programme as soon as possible and to act quickly in this time of crisis instead of sitting back and waiting for something to happen. Their delay in decision-making showcases their incompetence which has led to further damage instead of what could have been an opportunity to capitalise.
RAJIV RISHYAKARAN is the assemblyperson for Bukit Gasing.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.
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