The government will not rule out the possibility of selling beleaguered Malaysia Airlines Bhd (MAS) to foreign takers, if the price is right, according to Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
The Prime Minister said he was not against the idea of adopting a similar model to the Proton-Geely partnership, which has seemed to put the local company (Proton) in a good shape.
“There is, of course, this idea that some foreign companies might take a big piece of MAS. We are not against the idea,” he said in an interview with BFM radio station today.
He was asked if the government was willing to adopt the Proton-Geely approach, which saw China’s Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd purchasing a 49% stake from Proton to save the company from further troubles.
Back in 2017, Mahathir had mourned his brainchild Proton’s fate after DRB-Hicom sold 49 per cent of its stake to China’s Geely.
At that time, he had also wondered if this marked the beginning of the “great sell-out”.
“What are our assets? Our land of course! That was what we did in the past. We lost the land we sold. That is what we are doing now. And that will be what we will have to do – or forfeit our country like we forfeited Proton.
“It is probably the beginning of the great sell-out. The process is inexorable. No other way can we earn the billions to pay our debts. The only way is to sell our assets. And eventually, we will lose our country, a great country no doubt, but owned by others,” he had said in a blog post at that time.
However, it has since been pointed out that Mahathir had previously been open to the idea of foreign companies buying over Proton in news articles from 2014.
With regard to MAS, Mahathir noted that there are certain quarters who were against a deal such as with Geely, which would mean a non-Malaysian holding a major stake in the national carrier owned, due to the sentimental value of the airline.
“There are some who are very sentimental, so they want to see MAS owned entirely by Malaysians.
“However, there are no Malaysian investors strong enough to take up (the deal),” he said.
Mahathir had in June said the country was willing to consider selling MAS if there was a good offer on the table, claiming despite the government’s best effort to turn around the airline, it has failed.
Commenting further, Mahathir said the government was still looking for solutions to save the national carrier but admitted it has not been easy.
“The previous government has injected RM6 billion, sacked 6,000 staff, and in addition, reduced the number of flights. And yet the losses have been high,” he said.
The premier also acknowledged that one of the factors to have affected MAS’ businesses was the rise of low-cost carriers, noting that when MAS was first formed, carriers like AirAsia has yet to exist.
Sovereign wealth fund Khazanah Nasional Bhd had injected another RM300 million into MAS in August, following the first RM500 million capital injection in March.
These injections are reportedly part of the earlier RM6 billion funding approved under the 12-point MAS Recovery Plan (MRP) that was announced in 2014.