The displaced plantation workers: A case study of rubber estates in Kedah

Eviction of plantation workers, due to the development of estate lands and changing land ownerships, has been a big and unresolved issue. Many plantation areas have been sold to make way either for housing projects or industrial sites. When an estate is sold, the estate workers lose not only their jobs, but also their homes and additional sources of income from farming and animal husbandry. They are also entitled to receive termination benefits. The majority of these displaced workers have skills only in the agricultural sector and many of them are old aged. The main objective of this study was to analysis the socioeconomic situations of the displaced workers due to the development of the rubber estate lands in Kedah. The snowball sampling method was used to identify the respondents. The survey was based on 11 estates and 349 ex-workers of these estates were interviewed. The areas of this study were in Sungai Petani and Kulim. The results clearly showed that the majority of the evicted workers migrated to locations that were on average around 3km from their original estates. The majority of them worked with private sector companies upon their evictions. However, many of them are still in their estate houses, waiting for better compensation to be paid in the form of new houses elsewhere. It is suggested in this paper that the compensation should be in terms of home ownership, provided jointly by the government and firms. There have also been some suggestions to solve the issue through programmes provided by the Ministry of Agriculture

The impacts of oil shocks on Malaysia's GDP growth

This paper suggests that instrumental variable regression is a good alternative to nonlinear specification model when estimating the impacts of oil shocks on GDP growth in Malaysia

The impact of cash holding, and exchange rate volatility on the firm’s financial performance of all manufacturing sector in Pakistan

Exchange rate movement is a mostly debatable issue amongst economists and strategic financial planners in the economies as a vital phenomenon, of every economy in the developing the world. This study sets out to examine the impact of cash conversion cycle, Size, Age, and exchange rate movement on firms’ financial decisions. The estimation used techniques of static panel data analysis in this study; pooled OLS, random effects, and fixed effects. Interaction techniques are applied to check the impact of the exchange rate by multiplying this variable with the main variables of cash conversion cycle, that is receivable in days and payables in days. The results depict there is a significant negative relationship between return on assets and exchanger rate during the period of review while the beta of cash conversion cycle has negative value; age and size are positive and significant at 1% level with return on assets. Therefore, it is recommended that organizations that have some measure to agreement in foreign currencies can adopt some advanced hedging technique to occupy the exchange rate movements risk to improve firm’s performance

The effectiveness of location incentive: An analytical study of manufacturing SMEs in the Kedah State

The main objective of this research is to find out the effectiveness of location incentive in att racting Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to a certain industrial location in the state of Kedah. The location choice identified in this research would be Sungai Petani and non-Sungai Petani industrial areas. By using the logit model, we found that location incentive is not as effective as other factors in attracting SMEs in setting up their establishments in Kedah. The important factors that influence the location choice of manufacturing SMEs are (i) the years of operation of an SME, and (ii) the physical distribution of an SME product

Ketakseimbangan agihan industri dan migrasi penduduk di negeri Kedah

Historically known as a 'rice bowl' of Malaysia, the state of Kedah has shifted it focus on a more remunerating sector which is industrial-base sector. Although, agriculture remains as a major contributor to GDP of the state, it percentage is declining over the year.Agriculture sector in this country contribute 44% of GDP of the state, it percentage is declining over the year.Agriculture sector in this country contribute 44% of GDP in 1988 and decline to 35% in 1990.Meanwhile, between the year 1994-95 the industrial sector growth rate is 16%, however the agriculture sector growth is only 2.5% primarily resulting from the decrement in the domination of paddy and rubber.In this transformation will face the problem of industrial distribution inequality between regions.Industries with a modern technology based will be more concentrated in the developed regions while the less developed regions will continue to be left behind.In addition, this transformation process will also bring the migration problem especially by the male population and this will increase the population dependency ratio in the rural area.By using the " Location Quotient" the researcher will list the imbalance diffusion in the industrial specialization location by regions and regional specialization location by industry in Kedah

Pengaruh koperasi di tanah rancangan: Satu kajian empirikal

In every land's scheme two co-operatives that have a multipurpose function (Koperasi Serbaguna FELDA or KSF)has been formed by the land's entrepreneur with the support of FELDA.In 1980, FELDA has formed the Koperasi Permodalan FELDA (KPF).This co-operative has been formed to encourage saving among the settlers and to prepare the investment facility for this savings.In 1993, KPF approved the dividend of 15 percent.This amount is greater than the dividend and bonus given by Amanah Saham Bumiputera.The KSP usually give the dividend at the rate of 10 percent annually depends on the co-operative stability.More or less this dividends can increase the land's entrepreneur income.Through this study, the researcher tries to discuss the impact of the settlers' involvement in the co-operative activity and its effect on the income increment and income distribution in every selected areas under this study.The researcher also tries to show the relation between the period that land's has been utilized with the percentage given by the cooperative to the land's entrepreneur monthly income.The research also tries to observe whether there is any linkages between land's entrepreneur share in KPF with the monthly income and the period that land's has been utilized.Lastly, does the co-operative impact will decrease the percentage of the poor society or only give the opportunity to the rich group increase their income without being realized