{"id":63511,"date":"2020-02-27T17:43:51","date_gmt":"2020-02-27T09:43:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=63511"},"modified":"2020-02-27T18:18:48","modified_gmt":"2020-02-27T10:18:48","slug":"dr-m-announces-rm20-bln-economic-stimulus-package","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=63511","title":{"rendered":"Dr M announces RM20 bln economic stimulus package"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>PUTRAJAYA, Feb 27 (NNN-BERNAMA) &#8212; Malaysia&#8217;s interim Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad today announced a RM20 billion economic stimulus package aimed at reducing the impact of Covid-19 on the country&#8217;s economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>From tax incentives to measures to put more money in the pockets of Malaysians, the three-pronged package has been tailored to assist companies and businesses affected by the spread of the virus, while ensuring continued national economic growth and quality investments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p> Dr.Mahathir said among the industries seeing the most impact from Covid-19 were from the tourism sector such as hotels, airlines, tour agencies, as well as the retail and those in the food supply chain industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He said to cope with the drop in tourism arrivals, the government will set out various assistance such as tax discounts to help hotels, shopping malls and convention centres among others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Economic Stimulus Package was&nbsp;announced as scheduled despite the political crisis&nbsp;brought on by attempts to realign the country\u2019s political landscape which saw the Pakatan Harapan government losing its majority in Parliament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Malaysia recorded 22 positive cases of COVID-19 with 20 patients have fully recovered so far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Approximately 80,000 people have been infected with the disease worldwide with over&nbsp;2,800 deaths recorded mostly in China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr Mahathir said the&nbsp;most immediate economic impact of COVID-19 has been the sharp decline in tourist arrivals throughout the region as hotels, airlines, travel companies and more broadly the tourism-dependent retail industry have been badly affected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To mitigate the impact, the government will implement a three-pronged approach \u2013 first, to ease the cash flow of affected businesses, second, to assist affected individuals, and third, to stimulate demand for travel and tourism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr Mahathir began his speech by expressing his highest appreciation&nbsp;to the doctors, nurses, health workers, Immigration and other front liners protecting Malaysia from the COVID-19 outbreak.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>PUTRAJAYA, Feb 27 (NNN-BERNAMA) &#8212; Malaysia&#8217;s interim Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad today announced a RM20 billion economic stimulus package aimed at reducing the impact of Covid-19 on the country&#8217;s economy. From tax incentives to measures to put more money in the pockets of Malaysians, the three-pronged package has been tailored to assist companies [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":63546,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[288,300,318,297],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63511"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/63546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}