People are discovering what a rip-off neo-liberalism has been, observes financial economist and historian Dr Michael Hudson, in this interview “The way we were and what we are becoming” aired on 4 March 2009.
Click to listen (or download)
Click to listen (or download)
Nov 152008
RM3 billion of your EPF money has been lent for the Bakun Dam project (Photo credit: Raymond Abin/IPS)
This news report below doesn’t sound good. The Tenaga Nasional Bhd CEO is saying that government support is needed for the Bakun Dam to be economically feasible. Is this a request for a bailout?
Remember, we already have more than a 40 per cent electricity reserve margin in the peninsula, and more dams are supposed to sprout like mushrooms in Sarawak.
Remember, they have already borrowed RM3 billion from the EPF and RM0.4 billion from the Pension Trust Fund for Bakun. Does that mean they have already lent your EPF money for a project that will not be feasible without government support?
Then there’s the whole question of the viability of the Bakun Dam, seeing how even the dam catchment areas have been logged or degraded.
And they still want to build the Murum Dam near the Bakun Dam and relocate a thousand Penan inhabitants. Where is the money for Murum going to come from?
(TheEdgeDaily) Kuala Lumpur: Tenaga Nasional Bhd chief executive officer Datuk Seri Che Khalib Mohamed Noh said government support was needed for the Bakun Hydroelectric dam to be economically feasible.
“It can take the form of a pseudo-govt support in terms of the financing or other kind of support. But to ensure that the tariff from Bakun to Tenaga is at an affordable rate there must be some support. For Bakun, it cannot be purely commercial financing,” he told reporters during the International Energy Security Forum 2008 yesterday.
