Sime Darby Plantation sets up commission to evaluate its labour practices 02 Mar 2021 / 09:30 H.
PETALING JAYA: Sime Darby Plantation Bhd (SDP) has established an expert stakeholder human rights assessment commission and has appointed ethical trade consultant, Impactt Ltd as its third-party assessor, to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of SDP’s labour practices across its Malaysian operations.
It stated that the consultant has expertise in detecting and remediating forced labour issues in supply chains in line with the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) 11 indicators of forced labour.
The panel is also expected to review whether or not forced labour indicators are detected within SDP’s operations, and if there are any, to determine how prevalent the issue is.
KUALA LUMPUR (March 2): The US government’s accountability office has called for the US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) to publicly disclose the process for modifying or revoking a Withhold Release Order (WRO) issued on products suspected of using forced labour entering the US. In a report yesterday, the US Government Accountability office (GOA) said one aspect of CBP’s communication with other US federal agencies and other non-federal stakeholders, lacked transparency.
KUALA LUMPUR (March 1): Based on corporate announcements and news flow today, companies in focus on Tuesday (March 2) may include AMMB Holdings Bhd, HeiTech Padu Bhd, Pharmaniaga Bhd, Top Glove Corp Bhd, Advancon Holdings Bhd, Sime Darby Plantation Bhd and Uzma Bhd.
AMMB Holdings Bhd’s net profit for the third quarter ended Dec 31, 2020 (3QFY21) fell 30.96% to RM263.83 million from RM382.15 million a year ago, due to higher allowance for impairment on loans, advances and financing. The banking group’s quarterly revenue also slipped 11.81% to RM2.09 billion, from RM2.37 billion a year ago, its filing to Bursa Malaysia showed. AMMB did not declare any dividend for the latest quarter.
COMMODITIES which had a good run in 2020, thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic that spurred demand for everything from precious metals such as gold and silver to agricultural products like crude palm oil (CPO) and wheat are expected to continue seeing an upward trend in prices this year. “Bonds are in a bubble worldwide. Stocks in many countries are beginning to form bubbles. Properties in many cities are in a bubble. Commodities are still the cheapest asset class,” commodities guru Jim Rogers says in an email response to The Edge.
KUALA LUMPUR (Feb 22): Rakuten Trade Research is targeting the FBM KLCI to reach 1,870 points in 2021. At 11.33am today, the FBM KLCI was down 1.72 points to 1,583.21.
In its market outlook for the first quarter of 2021 (1Q21) briefing today, Rakuten Trade Research head of research Kenny Yee stated that this target for 2021 is based on a 15.5 times calendar year 2021 (CY21) price-to-earnings (PE) ratio, driven by solid earnings growth as well as prevailing alluring market valuations.
Earlier during his presentation, Yee said the research house had raised its corporate earnings recovery estimates for 2021 to 38.7%, from 35.3% previously.
“For 2021 everyone is expecting solid earnings growth from our corporates, especially among our KLCI constituents,” he noted.