Property Hunter Magazine Property Hunter Magazine Issue 53 - April 2014 | Page 84

52  53 | Contributor /// Banking and Investment News $₤ ¥ € BANKING & INVESTMENT NEWS The banking and investment industry has a crucial role to play when it comes to property. Read about the most recent news and trends in this trade Bank Proposes Banks to Introduce Prime Financing Rate rate framework for the industry to price retail loans. The briefing was chaired by governor Zeti Akhtar Aziz. Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) has proposed that banks introduce a prime financing rate (PFR) to replace the base lending rate (BLR) as the reference for pricing retail loans, bankers said. BNM briefed senior bankers on its proposal for a new reference 84 “It was proposed that a PFR - set by the respective banks replace the BLR for the pricing of all retail loans,” said a retail banker who spoke to The Edge Financial Daily on condition of anonymity. This suggest that banks will quote their lending rates as “PFR plus (a spread)”, rather than the current practice of www.PropertyHunter.com.my Will 2014 Be Kind to Investors in Industrial Real Estate? “BLR minus (a spread)”, he said. The PFR of each bank would be calculated based on the benchmark cost of funds plus the statutory reserve requirement (SRR), he said. The spread will reflect the bank’s profit margin, operating costs and credit risk, among other things. A report by Business Monitor International on real estate in Malaysia for the first quarter of 2014 says that slowly but surely, industrial real estate is growing in its portfolio of investments. It is the way to go, in terms of property investment in Malaysia. The recent announcement on the National Automotive Policy (NAP) 2014 promoting Malaysia as a single production base and marketing hub for energy efficient vehicles (EEV) is also likely to see industrial production expand and improve. This will obviously have a positive impact on the industrial property sector.