Russian governor resigns over deadly mall blaze

Yahoo – AFP, Anna SMOLCHENKO, April 1, 2018

At least 64 people including 41 children died in the mall fire in Siberia
last weekend (AFP Photo/Dmitry Serebryakov)

Moscow (AFP) - The longtime governor of a Russian region where a huge mall inferno killed dozens of people -- most of them children -- resigned on Sunday after bitter criticism over his response to the tragedy.

Aman Tuleyev, who had been at the helm of the coal-mining region of Kemerovo since 1997, said in a video address that he could no longer remain at his post with "such a heavy burden" and that quitting was "the only right choice".

The Kremlin swiftly said that President Vladimir Putin had accepted his resignation.

Tuleyev's move is unusual as top officials in Russia rarely resign over failings in the emergency response to deadly tragedies.

But the huge fire which ravaged a shopping centre in the Siberian industrial city of Kemerovo last Sunday, killing at least 64 people including 41 children, plunged Russia into shock.

Some parents lost all their children, and the youngest victim was a two-year-old boy.

Many people who lost relatives have said they perished because of inaction by firefighters and police lacking the necessary equipment and skills, while some said a cinema door was locked, trapping children inside.

Kremlin about-face

Tuleyev, who himself lost a young relative in the blaze, came under heavy criticism for failing to visit the scene of the tragedy in the first few days or meet with angry relatives.

Putin had initially refused to sack the 73-year-old governor despite a rare protest which saw thousands of people pack a square in Kemerovo on Tuesday, the same day Putin travelled to the scene of the tragedy.

Aman Tuleyev, shown with Putin after a mine explosion in 2010, was one of 

Russia's longest-serving top governors (AFP Photo/ALEXEI NIKOLSKY)

Tuleyev apologised to the president over the rally -- where protesters also called for Putin's resignation -- calling its organisers troublemakers.

Officials have said that multiple safety rules were violated, the fire alarm system was not working and staff did not follow correct emergency procedures.

The four-storey shopping mall was redeveloped several times and previously housed a sweet factory.

Seven people have been arrested in the aftermath of the blaze, investigators said.

The ailing Tuleyev had long been expected to leave the post.

The Kemerovo region of around 2.7 million people has traditionally been considered one of Russia's most troubled areas and some have feared that Tuleyev's departure could spark a leadership crisis there.

Tuleyev, who first became governor in the era of president Boris Yeltsin in 1997, is one of Russia's longest-serving top officials.

A makeshift memorial has been set up in tribute to the victims of a deadly shopping 
mall fire in the Siberian city of Kemerovo (AFP Photo/Dmitry Serebryakov)

He was credited with helping pacify the region which was beset by miners' strikes in the turbulent 1990s but had come to symbolise the worst excesses of authoritarianism in his later years, critics say.

'Hated by everyone'

Lev Shlosberg, a former lawmaker and rights activist, said Tuleyev "had become senile", adding that the tragedy had clearly shown that Russia turned into a "mafia" state.

"This is not an emotional or symbolic but a very concrete state of the authorities: they do not represent people and absolutely do not defend the interests of citizens because they do not depend on them in any way and do not hear them," he wrote in a blog.

"The life of an ordinary man in a mafia state costs nothing."

"Tuleyev is an example of how one climbs down from the throne after failing to leave on time: disgraced and hated by everyone, with stains of blood and someone else's tears," one commentator said on Twitter.

Opposition politician Vladimir Milov said it would take "decades" for the region to recover from Tuleyev's 21-year rule.

Thousands of people packed a square in Kemerovo to protest over the Russian 

authorities' response to the deadly mall fire (AFP Photo/Dmitry Serebryakov)

Sergei Tsivilyov, who has been Tuleyev's deputy since March, has been appointed acting governor, the Kremlin said.

Tsivilyov is a business partner of one of Putin's closest lieutenants, Gennady Timchenko, who has been under sanctions imposed on Russia for its role in the Ukraine conflict.

Tsivilyov's behaviour in the aftermath of the blaze has raised eyebrows.

Igor Vostrikov, a man who lost his wife, sister and three children aged two, five and seven years, accused the authorities of treating people "like dirt".

Tsivilyov responded by accusing him of a "PR stunt" but later went down on his knees in front of the crowd massed in Kemerovo, asking for forgiveness over the fire.

Polls to elect a new governor will be held in September.

From ghost city to boomtown, Phnom Penh soars high

Yahoo – AFP, Suy Se, 20 December 2015

Phnom Penh is second only to Laos in East Asia for the fastest rate of urban 

spatial expansion, according to the World Bank (AFP Photo/Tang Chhin Sothy)

From glitzy malls and high-rise flats to five-star hotels, a luxury building boom in Phnom Penh is transforming a capital once reduced to a ghost town into one of Asia's fastest growing cities.

Inside the recently opened Aeon Mall in the heart of Phnom Penh, Cambodia's first mega shopping centre, shoppers and curious residents flock to see the latest Levi's and Giordano handbags, snapping selfies in front of a giant Christmas tree.

It is a common scene across much of Southeast Asia but was previously unimaginable for many in Cambodia where around 20 percent of people still live on less than $1.25 per day.

But while poverty remains entrenched, a fast-growing middle class and elite are increasingly looking for local ways to spend their cash.

"I am glad we have such a modern mall in Phnom Penh. It shows the city is growing," says 20-year-old Bopha, a well-heeled university student who said her family made more than $1 million in a recent land sale.

Inside the recently opened Aeon Mall in the heart of Phnom Penh, Cambodia's 

first mega shopping centre, shoppers and curious residents flock to see the latest

 Levi's and Giordano handbags, snapping selfies in front of a giant Christmas tree

(AFP Photo/Tang Chhin Sothy)

Bopha said she used to have to travel to Thailand and Singapore for her shopping trips but that was now changing.

"Their cities are crowded with high-rise towers. I think we are heading in the same direction to be like them," she beamed.

The $200 million Japanese-built mall is just one of dozens of new shopping complexes, condominium projects and hotels springing up in Phnom Penh as Cambodia rides a wave of high economic growth rates in recent years.

The capital is second only to Laos in East Asia for the fastest rate of urban spatial expansion, according to the World Bank, and its economy is expected to grow at 6.9 percent this year.

Rise of the high-rise

All across the city luxury high-rise condos are popping up with names like "The Peak" and "Diamond Island", complete with billboards promising aspirational taglines such as "Sophisticated Urban Living".

A ferry sails past the five-star Sokha hotel in Phnom Penh (AFP Photo/

Tang Chhin Sothy)

According to the government, Cambodia drew construction investment worth $1.75 billion in the first nine months of 2015, a 13.7 percent rise from a year earlier.

Many of the new entrants into the kingdom's building market are developers from Japan, China, South Korea and Singapore.

The 39-storey Vattanac Capital Tower, Cambodia's first skyscraper which was finished in 2014, is designed in the shape of a dragon and incorporates Chinese traditional feng shui principles.

A few kilometres (miles) away, the local Overseas Cambodia Investment Corporation is drawing from the country's past, building Parisian-style apartments framed by a replica of the Arc de Triomphe on a riverside complex in downtown Phnom Penh.

But some are worried where the construction frenzy will leave a city once famed as the "Pearl of Asia".

In its French colonial heyday Phnom Penh was regarded as one of the loveliest cities in Southeast Asia thanks to its wide European-style avenues, carefully manicured gardens and picturesque stately homes.

Just a few decades later, the buzzing city was reduced to a ghost town when Pol Pot's brutal Khmer Rouge army seized control of the capital and ordered its two million people to evacuate.

Phnom Penh has been coming back to life since the radical communist regime

 was toppled in 1979 but the surge of activity and change to its landscape has

intensified in recent years (AFP Photo/Tang Chhin Sothy)

The city has been coming back to life since the radical communist regime was toppled in 1979 but the surge of activity and change to its landscape has intensified in recent years.

Poor pushed to city fringes

Silas Everett of The Asia Foundation in Cambodia fears the city's original charm is fast disappearing with villas and stately buildings from the colonial era being torn down to make room for lucrative new construction projects.

"Phnom Penh's architectural heritage is world renowned... Yet the rate of destruction of these buildings of significant cultural heritage is alarming," said Everett, mourning in particular the loss of buildings designed by famed Cambodian architect Vann Molyvann.

And while wealthy Cambodians are lining up for a chance to live in some of the city's most coveted new addresses, the urban poor are increasingly relegated to the edges of the capital where many were evicted to make way for commercial developments.

Critics of strongman premier Hun Sen, who has ruled with an iron fist for the last 30 years, say he has turned Cambodia into a notoriously corrupt fiefdom where those loyal to him are handsomely enriched.

But he remains unapologetic about the capital's rapid transformation.

Experts worry that Phnom Penh's original charm is disappearing with villas 

and stately buildings from the colonial era being torn down to make room for

lucrative new construction projects (AFP Photo/Tang Chhin Sothy)

Phnom Penh, he said during a speech in November, would have been a "coconut plantation" had the Khmer Rouge remained.

Instead, he added, "an already dead city survived through the bare hands of our people".

Not everyone has benefited, however.

Strolling through Aeon Mall, Seng Seat, 60, says most of the products remain outside her budget.

"The price of some clothes and shoes at the retail brand shops is too expensive," Seat said.

"I just had a look at the price and left immediately."

Billionaire Sy to Build Micro Cities Around His Philippine Malls

Jakarta Globe, Ian Sayson, Apr 01, 2015

Filipino residents paint homes as an AirAsia plane flies over at a housing project
in Paranaque city, south of Manila, Philippines, on March 25, 2015. Growth in the
 Philippine economy is set to pick up in 2015 as government expenditure
expands and both private consumption and investment remain strong, says a
new Asian Development Bank report. (EPA Photo/Francis R. Malasig)

Billionaire Henry Sy, the richest person in the Philippines, will start to develop apartments, offices and hotels around his shopping malls to maximize the value of property holdings in the face of similar moves by competitors.

Fifteen of 50 shopping malls now owned by Sy’s SM Prime Holdings are on land large enough for high-density, mixed-used development, executive vice president Jeffrey Lim, 53, said in an interview in Manila on Monday. Depending on demand, five so-called townships will be built in two years and about 10 more over five years, he said.

The townships will be part SM Prime’s 500-billion-peso ($11 billion) expansion from now through 2019, Lim said. They will pit the largest Philippine mall developer against Ayala Land and Megaworld, the biggest builders of mixed-used projects. Ayala and Megaworld have been building townships for several years, capitalizing on the rising office-space needs of outsourcing companies, while higher remittances from Filipinos abroad have fueled home purchases.

“SM Prime has plenty of resources around its malls, and these will become expensive parking lots if they don’t do this,” said Richard Laneda, an analyst at COL Financial Group, who has a buy rating on the company’s stock. “If they don’t do this, the market will go to the other developers.”

Publicly-held Philippine builders’ push for townships in and out of Manila boosted their capital spending to a record 331 billion pesos, according to broker Savills. Congestion in Metro Manila is driving demand in these micro-districts, it said.

‘On their toes’

Remittances climbed 5.8 percent to a record $24.3 billion last year. Money transfers from Filipinos living and working overseas account for about 10 percent of the nation’s economy, the World Bank estimates.

“The live-work-play lifestyle in these townships have resulted into a lot of success for some major developers,” Michael McCullough, Manila-based managing director at KMC MAG Group, the local associate of Savills, said in mid-March.

SM Prime “has to be on their toes to continue to have the upper hand,” said Allan Yu, first vice president at Manila- based Metropolitan Bank & Trust. He helps manage  about $7.5 billion, including SM Prime shares. “They have to upgrade their existing assets, not just expand their portfolio.”

Growing landbank

SM Prime has gained 37 percent over the last year, exceeding the 30 percent gain in Megaworld and the 29 percent advance in Ayala Land. The Philippine Stock Exchange Index has added 24 percent in that period and the Bloomberg Asia Pacific Real Estate Index 24 percent.

Net income will climb 19 percent this year to 21.87 billion pesos, according to median of 13 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

The company’s landbank stands at 900 hectares, Lim said. Before Sy pooled his property assets into SM Prime in 2013, the mall builder’s landbank was about 120 hectares, Lim said.

Sy, who is 90, has an estimated net worth of $13.4 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He migrated to the Philippines from China in 1936 and started selling rice, sardines and soap in his father’s Manila store. He opened a shoe store in 1948 and eventually built his business empire in the 1980s by opening malls.

Manila reclamation

SM Prime plans to spend 70 billion pesos this year to build malls and homes. After constructing three to four malls a year, SM Prime has said it plans to open as many as five in 2015. It plans to start five new residential projects this year and expand existing developments if there is demand.

As part of its strategy for 2015, SM Prime aims to sell as many as 14,000 homes valued at about about 3 million pesos each, Lim said. There is not a supply glut in that portion of the market, he said. The company gets about a third of revenue from home sales.

For the longer term, the company has applied to reclaim 600 hectares of land along Manila Bay and spend about 100 billion pesos to turn the property into a master planned integrated and mixed-use community. The development is adjacent to the group’s Mall of Asia complex and the strip of four integrated casino resorts that will make up Pagcor Entertainment City.

That plan, which has won permission from the city governments of Pasay and Paranaque, will be among the single biggest contiguous developments in Manila if approved by the nation’s economic planning agency.

“A number of our malls have excess land, and these are just there untouched,” Lim said. “Our thrust is to maximize the synergies of integrated development. Building lifestyle cities will maximize the potential of our properties.”

Bloomberg

When taxpaying communities step in

The Jakarta Post, Evi Mariani, Jakarta | Mon, 12/21/2009 12:42 PM

JP/J. Adiguna

Perhaps inadvertently, Jakarta – like many other cities in the world – has been swept away by the force of the market and neoliberalism, which has consequently transformed the way the city administration works.

In his 1989 paper “From Managerialism to Entrepreneurialism: The Transformation in Urban Governance in Late Capitalism” in the journal Geografiska Annaler, Human Geography Professor David Harvey argues that urban governance has “increasingly become preoccupied with the exploration of new ways in which to foster and encourage local development and employment growth”.

Harvey says such a stance is in contrast with the managerial role urban governance used to perform in the decades before the 1980s, which primarily focused on the local provision of services, facilities and benefits for the urban population.

Harvey based his argument on his observation on developed cities in Western Europe and North America in the 1980s. Yet two decades later and a thousand kilometers away, I find his analysis is applicable to contemporary Jakarta, which is increasingly pro-market. One of the consequences of the shift is the deterioration of public services as the administration has been busy ensuring a climate conducive to investment, and developing poor areas by evicting and gentrifying, among others.

One proof of the entrepreneurial Jakarta is the way the administration leases its property assets to the private sector, including for trade centers (such as ITC Mangga Dua), rather than build social housing for the poor or those in the lower-middle income bracket.

In the absence of managerial administration, community-based urban initiatives arise. What I would like to discuss in appreciation here are the kinds of initiatives trying to fill the gap left by the entrepreneurial administration, mostly driven by educated, taxpaying middle-class society.

This year welcomed a new one, Ruang Jakarta or Rujak, which is mostly Internet-based, using the address rujak.org. Initiated by, among others, an architect with a passion for environment and social issues, Marco Kusumawijaya, Rujak wants to create a network of residents of Greater Jakarta who want to do something for a better city. Within its young life, Rujak has drawn its readers’ attention to a broad range of urban issues, from earthquakes to floods, culture to local cuisine, and public space to waste management.

JP/Dina Indra Safitri

In a nutshell, everything that could help Jakarta become a sustainable metropolis. One could find a more visionary stance about Jakarta than one can find in any city agency in the administration. They say evaluate the malls, while the administration says they are open to new mall investments as long as the market allows.

Rujak is an addition to a list of initiatives that while criticizing the administration’s performance, also try to do something positive for Jakarta, a city that many people hate.

Recently, Governor Fauzi Bowo complained about the habit of littering, but as the leader of the city, he said he would not enforce the existing bylaw prohibiting littering, saying that it would be a hard feat as most of the perpetrators are poor people. Besides complaining, he has done nothing more.

But the Group Concerned About Waste, or Gropesh, stepped in years ago. They do campaigns, clean up garbage from public space on their own. And they say Fauzi lacks the political will and is only using poor people as an excuse not to do anything. Many prosperous residents litter too, Gropesh says.

Also in the social environment realm, there is the Jakarta Green Map, which regularly organizes gatherings to map the city. They have produced a map tracing city potentials along the Transjakarta corridors. They also have mapped lakes in Greater Jakarta. Recently, in cooperation with the Bike-to-Work Community (B2W), Green Map traced bicycle routes from Senayan in Central Jakarta to Lebak Bulus in South Jakarta.

Everybody fends for themselves in pro-market Jakarta, the urban poor too, though they are less publicized and most do not have organizations. Researcher AbdouMaliq Simone from London presented his report last year and among his findings in North Jakarta communities was that many of the residents got jobs not from the local administration, but from local gangs.

Simone said this was the result of a dysfunctional administration. He went on that in the long run, such informal authority could not work as it did not make people any better off. While communities like Rujak, Green Map, B2W, Gropesh and many others deserve heartfelt appreciation, I argue that the groups, or at least some of the job descriptions the group has assumed, are also the result of a dysfunctional or in Harvey’s word, entrepreneurial, administration.

For instance, if the administration carries out public services well, then communities like Green Map could focus more on mapping smaller-scale neighborhoods, their own, not mapping the Greater Jakarta lakes, which the administration should have done.

Essential to such entrepreneurial governance is the term public-private-partnership, Harvey says. In Jakarta’s case, oftentimes the administration claims the work of the communities by using this public-private-partnership scheme. It exerts minimum effort — the deployment of few agency officials and a small budget – while claiming a bonus: Increased public participation.

Lately, Jakarta has also seen an appropriation of community work for corporate interests. Green Map Indonesia has published an official statement to the effect that it refuses to join the Green Festival in Jakarta because the festival is sponsored by the Sinar Mas Group, a conglomerate currently in the spotlight for alleged massive logging that deforests Indonesia’s rainforests.

One could expect that the participation of Green Map Jakarta in the festival this year would be their last. It is important for the communities to be aware that the entrepreneurial administration and the market forces it supports so dearly have a great interest in the good and sincere work the communities do. While cooperation is generally good, communities should realize that one side could gain more than the other.

In the interests of these communities, I say strike a stronger bargain or even say no if necessary. My heart, and I’m sure the hearts of many, goes to you.

The author is a staff writer at The Jakarta Post.

Global recession overshadows property market

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Mon, 11/10/2008 11:13 AM 

 

Indonesia's property sector is already feeling the pinch from the global economic downturn as demand is slowing at a time when interest rate adjustments have become a necessity for developers to keep business going, a property consultant says.

 

PT Colliers International Indonesia said over the weekend in its latest survey that the slowdown had already been evident since the end of the third quarter, in particular in Jakarta and surrounding areas, hat it continues to be felt in the fourth quarter and most likely will continue to impact into next year.

 

Bank Indonesia's benchmark interest rate currently stands at 9.5 percent, with cumulative inflation already hitting double digits in the first ten months of the year.

 

Colliers' report comes just days after a similar survey by another property consultant, PT Procon Indah, which focused on the Greater Jakarta market and said that the industry is heading for a slowdown due to increases in interest rates and the effects of inflation on prices of materials and rental costs.

 

Colliers said the industrial sector in the Greater Jakarta area, for example, had already experienced lower transaction levels in the third quarter compared to the previous quarter as export-oriented companies cut back on their investment plans amid slowing demand.

 

Average rental rates in central business districts (CBD) rose in the same period slightly from Rp 87,268 per square meter per month to Rp 88,117 per square meter.

 

The total supply for CBD office stock is now reported to be 3.9 million square meters, up from 3.71 million square meters last quarter, while occupancy rates decreased slightly down to 88.76 percent from 89.62 percent previously.

 

Supply for strata title apartments grew by 3 percent in the second quarter and 0.91 percent in quarter three. On the demand side however, out of 77,277 apartment units under construction, only 65 percent were already taken up and net absorption for apartments in the third quarter reached 459 units, declining from 551 in quarter two.

 

"With the current total units being built equivalent to about half of the total existing units and anticipating additional supply from new projects over the next two years, the apartment market will be very tough in the future," the survey says.

 

The occupancy rate for retail space is expected to decline in the fourth quarter, with shopping centers adjusting their rental rates to meet market conditions.

 

Still, retail space supply is set to increase from 3.21 million square meters in 2007 to 3.31 million square meters.

 

Meanwhile, the hotel occupancy rate nation-wide increased by 0.82 percent from the second quarter, with the five-star category dominating the market at 47.5 percent.

 

The survey reports that in the last quarter of the year hotel occupancy rates in Bali will fare better than most cities in the country -- including Jakarta and Surabaya -- due to the large local tourist potential. (dis)

Ratu Plaza given two months to repair basement

Mustaqim Adamrah, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Thu, 05/08/2008 11:03 AM

 

The city administration will give two months for PT Ratu Sayang International (RSI) to fix the basement of Ratu Plaza shopping center in Central Jakarta after a gas leak incident, which sent 27 employees of Carrefour hypermarket to hospital.

 

"This is their last chance. If they fail to meet standard requirements, the basement will be closed," Governor Fauzi Bowo said Wednesday.

 

He said after the repair the administration would verify the basement's safety before allowing it to reopen.

 

The management of Carrefour's France-based retailer decided to keep renting out the basement despite a number of incidents which have caused employees and customers health problems since 2002.

 

"We still want to continue renting out the basement because we want to keep the place. We will follow any process required by the city administration," director for corporate affairs Irawan Kadarman said.

 

He said Carrefour would open again after the building's management repaired the basement.

 

During a blackout, the building's ventilator was cut, leaking carbon-monoxide into the basement. Employees were taken to Pertamina Hospital, South Jakarta, suffering nausea, vomiting, headaches and respiratory problems.

 

The city's property management and control agency head Hari Sasongko said the city administration would take the incident to court.

 

"The city's manpower and transmigration agency, as well as the city health agency, have proposed a number of recommendations, including legal action," he said Tuesday after a meeting with RSI.

 

Officials from the city's fire agency, environmental management agency, city economic affairs bureau and the legal affairs bureau, as well as representatives of France-based retailer Carrefour, also attended the meeting.

 

Representatives of a city-appointed team in charge of reviewing the building's condition also attended the meeting.

 

RSI refused to comment on the administration's response to the incident. (ind)

Summarecon issues bonds for expansion

The Jakarta Post, Thu, 05/08/2008 11:03 AM 

 

Publicly listed property developer PT Summarecon Agung issued Wednesday its first Islamic bonds (sukuk), worth Rp 200 billion (US$21.69 million), and conventional bonds, worth Rp 100 billion, carrying returns of between 13.75 and 14 percent per annum.

 

The bonds, to be offered between June 10 and 12, would have a five-year maturity period and would be listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange on June 18, President Director Johannes Mardjuki said Wednesday during a press conference.

 

"Around 70 percent of the proceeds from these bonds will be allocated for purchasing land in Kelapa Gading and its surrounding area in North Jakarta and 30 percent for working capital," he told reporters.

 

Corporate secretary Michael Yong said previously the company intended to issue up to Rp 500 billion in bonds.

 

"Since interest rates on state bonds have increased to 12.5 percent from less than 11 percent two months ago, we decided to reduce our bonds to Rp 300 billion," he said.

 

Summarecon has appointed PT Andalan Artha Advisindo Sekuritas and publicly listed PT Kresna Graha Sekurindo to underwrite the bonds.

 

The company's net profit in the first quarter decreased to Rp 36.76 billion from Rp 43.83 billion due to the increasing tax charge, Michael said.

 

In anticipation of increases in the price of construction materials, the company has signed agreement contracts with its suppliers to ensure fixed prices for six months to a year. -- JP/rff

Shopping mall business is booming, plenty of room for more: Developers

Multa Fidrus, The Jakarta Post, Tangerang | Tue, 03/25/2008 11:20 AM 

 

Mall developers say that despite the rapid construction of new shopping malls in Greater Jakarta in recent years, further expansion is viable enough that the number of malls here could double by 2011.

 

The chairman of the Jakarta-Banten chapter of the Indonesian Shopping Center Association (APPBI), Andreas Kartawinata, said the increasing population density and improving socioeconomic conditions were the main factors behind the opportunity.

 

He said close proximity of malls had nothing to do with the survival of each.

 

"The success of mall businesses will be decided by attractions presented by each mall," he said.

 

Andreas said the APPBI catered to 60 shopping malls in Greater Jakarta, a quarter of which were located in Tangerang.

 

PT Lippo Karawaci leads in the expansion of big shopping malls, building and managing more than 20, while PT Sinar Mas, with its ITC malls, comes in the second, he said.

 

Andreas predicted the number of shopping malls in Greater Jakarta would double by 2011.

 

He said to survive in the long-term, shopping malls in Tangerang should also cooperate, not only compete.

 

He cited the success of the Orchard Road shopping district in Singapore.

 

"Orchard Road consists of shopping centers stacked together, with no distance between them. All attract visitors and make a profit since they cooperate with each other," he said.

 

PT Lippo Karawaci spokesman Paulus Tambunan said the mall business was still lucrative, adding that most retail space at malls under his company's management were leased to tenants.

 

"It's easier to manage with a leasing system for the survival and the progress of the shopping mall," he said.

 

He said among Lippo's shopping malls using a leasing system were Plaza Semanggi, Mega Mall Pluit, Lippo Cikarang and Cibubur Junction, Pejaten Village, Ekalokasari Plaza, Kemang Village and Puri Village Malls in Greater Jakarta, and Bandung Indah Plaza and Istana Plaza in Bandung and Binjai Supermal in North Sumatra.

 

However, Paulus said some malls were still struggling to attract tenants.

 

"Spaces at other Lippo malls such as Belanofa Country Mall in Sentul, WTC Serpong and Metropolis Town Square in Tangerang, Depok Town Square in Depok, Medan Grand Paladium in North Sumatra, GTC Makassar in South Sulawesi and City Octomoro in Surabaya are for sale," he said.

Rules on green building needed: Entrepreneur

The Jakarta Post

The Jakarta administration should set up fixed rules on the application of "green building" designs to help reduce energy consumption and save the earth, says a businessman.

Property tycoon Pra Ciputra said Saturday the city should also cooperate with developers and entrepreneurs to carry out the program.

"As entrepreneurs, we can't run the green program ourselves because it's very expensive. For green building designs, costs are 10 times more than for normal building construction." "No entrepreneur wants to suffer a financial loss like that. If I, for example, apply it to all of my constructions, while my competitors do not, it's going to hurt quite a bit.

"It's a mass program. That's why the administration needs to cooperate with entrepreneurs and developers," said Ciputra (center) upon receiving an honorary doctoral degree from the University of Tarumanegara in Grogol, West Jakarta.

Rector Dali Santun (right) presented him with the doctoral certificate Saturday during a university senate plenary meeting. Ciputra's wife, Dian Sumeler (left), was in attendance.

Green building designs, Ciputra said, were urgent for the densely populated capital, which has few green areas.

"Indonesia is far behind other countries like Singapore, Malaysia and South American countries, where it's not hard to find green-roof programs and parks on top of skyscrapers."

Ciputra, 77, is responsible for the development of more than 40 shopping centers, housing complexes and townships. His best-known project is the popular seaside theme park Ancol, which was once a swamp. (trw)

Too much of a good thing will be disastrous for the retail sector

Debnath Guharoy, Consultant

The Jakarta Post - The runaway development of shopping malls in Jakarta is living proof of reckless greed, a monumental disaster in the offing. It is a good example of how poor information, bad planning and a lack of common sense is already hurting, and will continue to hurt, investors and workers alike.

As always, it is the people at large who will eventually pay the price for the folly of a few.

Anybody who has wandered into one of the shiny new malls in Jakarta will have been surprised by the eerie quiet at midday.

Where is the midday crowd, you wonder? How do the owners pay the staff for waiting patiently for that elusive customer? How will these shiny new shops get returns on their investments? How will the banks recover their loans?

Of all Jakartans 14 years of age and older, 43 percent have been to a shopping mall in the last month. Thirty-four percent have actually spent some money at the mall.

These numbers reflect the collective weight of Jakarta's affluent, its middle class and some of the less privileged. Significantly big, both in terms of footfall and spending. But there is a limit to how many malls they can visit or how much money they can spend.

Not surprisingly, there is no dramatic surge in mall visitation in recent years, with inflationary pressures and rising prices keeping many in the middle class at home. The kind of surge in mall development that Jakarta is going to witness in the next 24 months will overwhelm many, but will "underwhelm" the shopper.

Fourteen new malls, with an estimated floor space of some 600,000 square meters, are mushrooming right now. For whom? Like most of Indonesia's top 20 cities, the middle class in Jakarta isn't really growing and any assumptions of expansion based on population growth are simplistic and inaccurate.

The reality is quite the contrary, in fact.

Developers, bankers and builders are putting up shopping malls as if the country is in the middle of an economic boom. "Build and they will come." That mantra may work in Dubai, an oasis among the rather bland cities in its neighborhood.

But it cannot work here. It is unlikely that Jakarta is going to become a shopper's paradise for the region, in competition with Singapore, anytime soon. Depending on Jakartans to fill the empty spaces or aiming to attract shoppers from the other cities of Indonesia is wishful thinking.

These conclusions are based on Roy Morgan Single Source, the country's largest syndicated survey with over 27,000 Indonesian respondents annually, projected to reflect almost 90 percent of the population over the age of 14. That is a universe of 140 million people. The results are updated every 90 days but the opinions expressed here are my own.

The prognosis isn't difficult to construct. The developers are going to be hit hard. Distress sales will bring down revenues from existing malls. Banks who have financed some of these mammoth new projects will find themselves unwilling owners of real estate.

As always, they will aim to recover those losses from their other customers, big and small. Big retailers and franchise-owners will see smaller returns from each outlet they currently own and feel pressured to open in the new malls to protect their overall market share.

Small retailers hoping to win from their mere presence in a glitzy new mall will suffer from sparse traffic. Many of the new retail jobs created will wither away in time, creating anguish among families. The shopping mall "pie" simply isn't growing and slicing the same one up in even smaller pieces is going to leave a lot of red on the balance sheet. It won't be ketchup.

Why does this kind of self-inflicted malaise occur in Indonesia? Whether it is developers, retailers or bankers, there is an amazing lack of maturity among decision-makers.

While some industries have their own associations, very few of them are effective. This appears to be true of industries across the spectrum.

The utter lack of appropriate data, the misplaced over-confidence and the scant regard for basic marketing discipline are the primary culprits.

There is no advantage in jumping off a cliff ill-equipped, either individually or one after the other.

If industry association meetings are forums to protect vested interests and spread disinformation to confuse the competition instead of being the industry platform to collate and share hard data, experiences and concerns, the immaturity of individuals at the helm will inflict pain not only upon themselves but also upon their associates and society at large.

Without intellectual maturity, without commercial discipline, every type of business is vulnerable -- not just the retail sector. If an essential resource for a successful business is reliable information, not misinformation or disinformation, what does your association offer? Then ask yourself what you have done for it lately.

The writer can be contacted at debnath.guharoy@roymorgan.com

Minister checks waste system at malls

JAKARTA (Jakarta Post) : State Minister for the Environment Rachmat Witoelar found inadequate solid waste management facilities Friday at up-scale shopping center Grand Indonesia, Central Jakarta.

"I have asked Grand Indonesia management to provide proper facilities for solid waste management," he said after inspecting waste management facilities and percolation pits in the compound.

"The management promises to decide within one month which solid waste management facility will be suitable for them, and procure equipment within three months," he said.

The management, however, already had proper facilities for liquid waste management, Rachmat said, adding that it also had percolation pits in compliance with a 2005 regulation.

"It is good to see Grand Indonesia already has 17 percolation pits that function properly during heavy rains," he said.

Grand Indonesia drainage system consultant Nyoman Darmawati said the mall had well-designed percolation pits that could hold up to 40 cubic meters of water each.

"We also have a 3.2-kilometer drainage system that can retain up to 1 million cubic meters of water before releasing it slowly into Cideng River," she said.

"That's why this mall is flood-free."