Muara Teweh!

BUDGET 2008’s theme is Enhancing Competitiveness and Sharing Economic Prosperity – a continuation of previous policies aimed at sharpening the nation’s competitive edge while creating a favourable investment climate for companies to realise their potential and venture into new growth areas and innovate.

We expect the broad budget measures to continue with the emphasis on strengthening the economy’s competitiveness and resilience to external risks.

The immediate challenge is to stimulate domestic and foreign investments. Private investment grew by 7% in 2006 and is estimated to expand by 8.5% in 2007 and 10.5% in 2008, falling short of the Ninth Malaysia Plan (9MP) target growth of 11.2% per annum during 2006-2010.

Although foreign direct investment (FDI) into Malaysia has improved since 2001, it is still lagging behind regional peers. Malaysia attracted US$6bil FDI in 2006, low compared with China (US$78.1bil), Singapore (US$24.2bil), Indonesia (US$7.5bil) and Thailand(US$9.8bil). » Read the rest of the entry..

Petronas, the Malaysian oil and Gas company, last month started drilling the second oil exploration well in the Gambella basin, in south-western Ethiopia.

In June 2003, Petronas and the Ethiopian Ministry of Mines and Energy (MME) signed a petroleum development and production sharing agreement that enables the company to prospect for oil in the Gambella basin. Since 2004, Petronas has been collecting seismic data in the exploration area covering 16,000 sq km of land near the Ethio-Sudanese border. Based on the seismic data, last year Petronas drilled the first exploration well (wild cat well) in a locality called Gigaw.
Africa 2007

It took three months to drill the first exploration well, which is 3500m. deep. After finalizing the drilling last May, Petronas conducted an oil test in the first well. But the exploration well turned out to be dry (no oil shown). However, the company discovered sedimentary rocks » Read the rest of the entry..

CRUDE oil prices are expected to gradually drop in 2007, but analysts do not expect it to fall below US$50 (US$1 = RM3.52) per barrel.

They see support from production cuts by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) and rising global demand, particularly from China. » Read the rest of the entry..