No Sukuk For The Needy

KUALA LUMPUR: It appears that the plan to use Sukuk (The Islamic equivalent for bonds) to raise money for the purchase of arms and defence-related infrastructure projects had been torpedoed by the Treasury.
The main reason for this I am told is that it was a bad idea in the first place to propose such financial arrangements for the arms purchases.
It was also feared that if the sukuk issuance is under subscribed it will affect other similar attempts from the Malaysian government to raise money in the open market. Yes I know LTAT may have a lot of funds but its own rules limits its investments to a small percentage of its assets.
I am guessing that Mindef will have to be content with whatever doled out to them in RMK10. With the Home Ministry asking for at least RM8 billion from RM23 billion allocation set aside for the security, one has to wonder whether how many items in the ATM wish-list will be deferred yet again…

–Malaysian Defence

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