KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 9 — The 10 billion units of Amanah Saham Bumiputera 2 (ASB2) shares launched recently will not benefit the Bumiputera majority who earn too little to invest, DAP’s Zairil Khir Johari said today as he questioned who stood to gain from the initiative.

According to the Bukit Bendera MP, only top-earning Bumiputera will be able to afford investing in the new unit trust fund by Permodalan Nasional Berhad (PNB), which defeats the purpose of the programme aimed to raise the whole community’s financial status.

“The proposed launch of 10 billion ASB2 units is highly questionable. Who is set to benefit from more ASB shares made available?” Zairil asked in a statement.

“Would the bottom 40 per cent of Bumiputera households be able to invest in these high-yielding shares considering that they hardly earn enough to get by?”

The launch of ASB2 was one of the initiatives in a New Economic Model (NEM) to boost the role of the Bumiputera in the country’s economy as announced by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak last month.

It was hoped that the ASB2 would encourage the middle Bumiputera group to buy shares, as the maximum limit in the original ASB was only RM200,000.

Zairil further questioned PNB today for claiming in its annual report that Bumiputera investors have invested on average RM14,097 per person as at end 2012, suggesting significant savings from the community.

“However, upon closer inspection, this figure is actually misleading. When the numbers are broken down, it turns out that three-quarters of Bumiputera unit-holders actually have an average investment of a mere RM611 per person,” he stressed.

“How then, would the availability of more units benefit the average Bumiputera, when they are unable to take advantage of even the current available ASB shares?”

PNB group CEO and president Tan Sri Hamad Kama Piah Che Othman told reporters last month that PNB is still mulling the structure of ASB2, whether it will be a fixed or variable price fund.

This comes as he revealed that about half of the RM5 billion Bumiputera allocations in the Amanah Saham 1Malaysia (AS1M) share trust units have not yet been taken up.

In a high-profile announcement last month, Najib had trotted off a list of over RM31 billion in various loans, contracts and programmes that will be made available to the group, with the stated aim of strengthening Bumiputera economic participation and boost their ownership of commercial property.