BY YEE XIANG YUN

Proposal: Ismail (right) submitting a nomination for Irda at the Iskandar Malaysia Social Hero Awards ceremony yesterday to the award’s committee chairman V. Thanam while Irda social development head Nor Hisham Hussein looks on.

JOHOR BARU: UEM Sunrise Bhd’s move to abort the earlier proposed RM1.4mil China Mall project in Nusajaya should not be seen as a sign that Iskandar Malaysia is troubled, said Iskandar Regional Development Authority’s (Irda) chief executive officer.

Datuk Ismail Ibrahim said it was not unusual for companies or developers to abort a development if it was deemed unprofitable to the company or its stakeholders.

He stressed that the developer’s decision to terminate the memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Chinamall Holdings Pte Ltd (CHPL) to cooperate in developing the mall should not be used as a yardstick to gauge Iskandar’s growth.

He said it was normal for developers and companies to be sensitive to the surroundings of a proposed development and the suitability of implementing a project in a certain area.

“Surely they would have reassessed the project and its impact on its stakeholders and profits before coming to the decision to pull out or postpone a certain development.

“These things happen from time to time,” he told pressmen when met after kicking off the nominations for the Iskandar Malaysia Social Hero Awards at the Ponderosa Golf and Country Club here yesterday.

Following that, Ismail said people should not jump to conclusions or doubt Iskandar’s growth potential.

He added that the developer had informed Irda about the termination though no official statement was released yet.

“It is also possible that they are in the midst of evaluating whether to replace the aborted investment with another development and it is in our capacity to give them the space and opportunity to make such decisions,” he added.

It was reported that UEM Sunrise, the master developer of Nusajaya, told Bursa Malaysia on Thursday that its unit UEM Land had decided to terminate the MoU because both parties were unable to make any significant headway for the project.

The proposed mall worth over RM600mil, part of the huge Asian Trade Centre development in Iskandar, would have housed more than 3,000 merchants, offering products ranging from textile to household appliances.