Address negative coverage of Malaysia's financial situation, says CIMB Group chairman

PETALING JAYA - Malaysia needs to address the negative coverage of the country's financial situation in international publications, said CIMB Group chairman Datuk Seri Nazir Razak (pic).

"We have to change the current narrative about Malaysia with answers or legal suits; can't just ignore them," he said in a post on his Instagram here yesterday.

Nazir was commenting on a Bloomberg report on data from Moody's Corp that credit-default-swaps traders believed six developing nations, including Malaysia and South Africa, deserved to follow Brazil into junk status.

Malaysia is currently ranked A3 by Moody's.

Nazir, who is the brother of the Prime Minister, believed that these traders could have placed Malaysia in the "junk" category due to the large amount of negative coverage in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and the New York Times.

"This is worrying. The market is much more negative about Malaysia than the rating agencies, taking us into 'junk' category, way below our fundamentals," he said, adding that "all 'capital' people read at least one, if not all of them (the newspapers)."

Although Nazir did not specify what Malaysia had to answer for, the country has recently made international headlines for controversies involving the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).