IPOH: The Movie Animation Park Studios (MAPS) theme park in Meru Raya is now self-sustaining and does not need any injection of capital.
Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Ahmad Faizal Azumu said this showed that the strategic plan to strengthen the financial standing of the park by the state government had already shown encouraging results.
“The MAPS management has also ended its intellectual property agreement with Dreamworks and Universal Studios. MAPS is now carrying out partnerships with several new entities as a part of a restructuring of operational costs and capital expenditure in order to increase the attractions at the park,” he said in his winding-up speech at the state legislative assembly sitting.
Recently, Aulong assemblyman Nga Kor Ming had suggested that the state government sell MAPS in an open tender so as to lessen the losses the government had incurred until now.
Faizal said the state government acknowledged the concerns of some members of society and some assemblymen over the financial standing of the theme park.
He said the park’s management were now giving more attention to marketing it and, to date, 67,549 tickets had been sold, with estimates of an average of 2,000 daily visitors expected throughout the school holiday season.
“The state government, however, is open to other options, including the possibility of accepting investments from private sector companies, if they were interested,” he said.
Faizal said the new management of Menteri Besar Incorporated (MB Inc) had also decided that state operational costs needed to be reduced by up to 50 per cent and were currently reviewing agreements which were causing losses to MB Inc and the state government.
He said, among the early steps which had been taken were an audit on MB Inc, something which had not been done since 2012.
Faizal said the audit, by the firm Jeffrey & Co, showed that MB Inc recorded losses of nearly RM40 million for the fiscal periods between 2012 and 2015, adding that the audits for fiscal years 2016 and 2017 were still ongoing.
“What was surprising is that, despite posting losses every year, the management prior to this still approved bonuses, high expenditures for ‘retreats’, some of which were for overseas trips, and the purchase of luxury cars.”