KUALA LUMPUR: The government has been urged to introduce the ‘helicopter drop’ policy to the country’s sports industry to help its players stay relevant in the post-Covid-19 pandemic.
Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) Faculty of Sports Science & Recreation senior lecturer Mohd Sadek Mustaffa proposed the recommendation as an alternative to revitalise the economy in the sports sector, which has been affected for the past three months.
“Without sports, the world is a lonely place and that’s the reality. Sports is not only important economically but also for political and social stability.
“The government needs to come up with a bold policy which, in economic terms, is called ‘helicopter drop’ to reactivate funding in the sports industry. So far, there has been no specific announcement by the government regarding a special fund for the sports industry,” he said.
He said this in the UiTM sports talk programme titled Edisi II (Second Edition), which discussed the extent to which the Malaysian sports industry has been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic live on YouTube Thursday (June 4).
The helicopter-drop theory is based on the basic assumption that money put directly into people’s bank accounts will prompt them to spend parts of it on goods and services, boost demand for products and help keep the economy stay afloat.
Mohd Sadek also suggested that the Finance Ministry should introduce a special financial system by taking into account the investment models adopted by Bank Simpanan Nasional (BSN) and National Higher Education Fund Corporation (PTPTN).
According to him, the creation of such a system would benefit all the sports industry players especially and help ease the financial burden of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) by investing in these financial institutions.
“We do not have a financial institution that supports the sports industry. The Finance Ministry needs to look at how the model has been used by BSN or PTPTN, which we can then apply to help sports industry players whether they are SMEs or not.
“This is important because the institution can provide an initial injection or a solution to any problem faced by industry players in expanding the industry at a small marginal cost. So these benefits can be enjoyed by the those who invest in the institution,” he added.
Several panelists on the programme, who are also sports industry players, admitted to being affected by the pandemic.
Universal Fitness & Leisure Sdn Bhd (UFL) managing director Datuk Radha Krishnan said the experience of having steered the company through the Asian financial crisis (AFC) 1997-1999 had been a bit of a help for his company this time.
“The pandemic has effected sports businesses quite badly, with many having problems paying their bills, rents as and staff salary. We learned something from 1998 during the Asian financial crisis, we applied some (of the) measures (adopted then) so that we won’t be badly affected this time.
“What we did was to make sure of our stock level, the inventory level is quite controlled so it managed to cushion some of our business,” he said.
RS Group executive director R Subramaniam admitted that Covid-19 had had negative and positive impacts on his company.
“Even as we resume operations, the way things are done has changed according to standard operating procedures (SOPs). So the cost for us to get a job done increases and this results in less profit.
“But the good thing is that we are able to restructure strategies we didn’t have time to work on before. So, we can better understand all our employees (strengths and weaknesses) and see the shortcomings in management,” he added. – Bernama
