Artistic Controls Blog

Budget 2010

Datuk Seri Mohd Najib Tun Razak the prime minister of Malaysia on yesterday Friday tabled the 2010 Budget totaling RM191.5 billion and which has a three-pronged strategy to drive the nation towards a high-income economy; ensuring holistic and sustainable development; and focusing on the well-being of the people.

Najib said that to drive the country towards a high-income economy, the government would encourage increased private investment, provide a business-friendly environment and implement privatization initiatives.

The prime minister said RM20.3 billion is allocated to the social sector encompassing education and training, health, welfare, housing and community development, RM3.7 billion is for the development of the security sector, RM1.8 billion for general administration and RM2 billion for contingencies.

To me I wanted to see if the budget has some benefit for the business point of view. I read through 49 pages of the text and here are some points I pick up that could benefit my company business and light and sound industry in general.

1.    Among projects to be implemented in 2010 include the development of an Integrated Immigration, Customs and Quarantine Complex (CIQ) in Bukit Kayu Hitam, construction of 6 UiTM campuses and the development of MATRADE Centre.
-    This is interesting as new UiTM campuses will require proper light and sound system.

2.    To strengthen ICT, the Government will expedite the implementation of High Speed Broadband (HSBB) at a total cost of RM11.3 billion, of which RM2.4 billion is from the Government and RM8.9 billion from Telekom Malaysia. Initially, broadband services with the speed of 10 mega bytes per second (Mbps) will be provided in selected areas in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor by en-March 2010. Subsequently, these services will be extended to other areas nationwide between 2010 and 2012.
-    I am looking forward for a better broadband services cause the Malaysia broadband is really 2 – 3 times below par compare the Singapore and other neighboring country.

3.    To further enhance broadband penetration, the Government proposes that individual taxpayers be given tax relief on broadband subscription fee up to RM500 a year from 2010 to 2012.
-    At least some discount given – not bad…

4.    For the education sector, the government will allocate RM19 billion, RM2.8 billion for student assistance and scholarship programme, RM1.6 billion for the construction of 80 new schools as well as 1,100 additional blocks and 347 school replacement projects.
-    News school means new business opportunity for audio visual system.

The rest of the budget is mostly for the growth of the economy in general and to drive the nation forward. I am quite happy with this year budget and hopefully next year could be better.

Lee Hoe Transport

Today Lee Hoe Transport Company has just delivered the lighting equipments to our office in Puchong. Yesterday they pick up the goods from my supplier office in Singapore and now it is already in my office. They are our appointed transporter from Singapore to KL. They are also the forwarding clearing agent that clear the custom at Johor Bharu and pay the duty on our behalf.  Their service is prompt and reliable.

I recalled that for so many years I have known them when I was working as sales engineer in O’Connor Malaysia. And now we use them as our appointed forwarding agent for Singapore Malaysia route.  They have been in the forwarding and transportation business for more than 30 years and they are still the best transport company if you want to bring equipments and parcel from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur. Their core business of the company is cross-border freight forwarding ie providing land transportation for cargoes and goods from Singapore to West Malaysia and vice versa.

I have nothing but praises to their dedicated service even though it is the business as usual for them.

After hosting my website locally in Malaysia for about 3 years, I decided to change my web hosting to United State (US). For the past 3 years I had a few major problem with my local hosting company that I think the local hosting company was not mature enough in this hosting business. I had the server crashed several times that one of them resulted in complete lost of the databases. My database was gone. The login to the control panel was slow and most of the time non responsive. This has frustrating my online website.

Anyway after a brief online study I make up my mind to transfer my domain registrar and web hosting to Hostgator company based in US. Not only the hosting pricing is competitive but I get unlimited email, unlimited databases and unlimited web space and more. The cpanel is quite friendly and easy to use. The online support and tutorial is very helpfull.

Before changing my hosting company I called my local hosting company and ask them about their new packages. They say their new package is better and all their server hosting is now based in US.  They advise their existing customer to migrate the hosting to their server in US. I guess they know their limitation here.

Now that my web hosting problem is over and I will post regularly in this Artistic Blog. Do come back for more.

By Admin