MAS expected to announce special fares

Malaysia Airlines is expected announce a special package for international fares early next year to help promote Visit Malaysia Year 2007 (VMY 2007).
Deputy Tourism Minister Datuk Donald Lim said the Tourism Ministry had requested MAS to be more competitive with other international airlines.
“Recently, my minister and I have travelled quite a fair bit. There are a lot of complaints that MAS’ fares are expensive,” he told reporters at the announcement of winners of the Small and Medium Businesses recognition award 2006 here on Friday.
“For domestic fares, we leave it to the Transport Ministry but the international portion is what we are very concerned about. We are asking them to look at the whole fare structure. That’s most important because that kind of pricing nobody can control, not the Government.”
Lim said the ministry held a discussion with Transport Minister Datuk Seri Chan Kong Choy and the airlines’ top management officials yesterday, and MAS had come up with proposals to help the tourism industry with a special package for VMY 2007.
He said the special package would hopefully restore the confidence of the public and foreign tourists.
Lim said a special task force would also be formed to ensure all went well for VMY 2007 and to resolve any problems. Currently, he said there was only a joint committee on posters and billboards to be put up for the VMY 2007.
Lim, who is MCA SME bureau chairman, also said the ministry was in talks with small-and-medium entrepreneur (SME) banks to ensure that loan applications for SMEs carrying out tourism-related projects be approved within two or three months.
“Some applications take a year to be approved. We are looking into ways to cut down the red tapes,” he said, adding that if required, financial advisor services could be engaged to look at project viability.
On the ministry’s request for the Special Tourism Fund and Tourism Infrastructure Fund be increased from RM1.2bil each to RM3bil each, he said the ministry had yet to receive approval from the Finance Ministry.
“We have written to the Finance Ministry and hope the Government will approve it as soon as possible because there is more or less nothing much left of the existing RM1.2bil we got for the Tourism Infrastructure Fund under the Ninth Malaysia Plan.”