Malaysian sovereign wealth fund Khazanah Nasional’s profit from operations plunged 60.81% last year, hit by higher impairments and lower divestment gains amid the coronavirus crisis, and it expects 2021 to remain challenging, with the key aviation and tourism sectors unlikely to recover fully before 2023.
The fund’s profit from operations declined to 2.9 billion ringgit (US$712.22 million) from 7.4 billion ringgit in 2019.
Although dividend income from investee companies jumped 36.84% to 5.2 billion ringgit, this was offset by a sharp drop in divestment gains to 2.7 billion ringgit from 9.9 billion ringgit in 2019.
Nevertheless, the wealth fund doubled dividend payments to the government, its sole shareholder, to 2 billion ringgit from 1 billion ringgit in 2019.