KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 25 — State-owned Felda is experiencing problems in its overseas stakes that appear to threaten its planned listing and could further impact national polls widely expected to be called next year, the Singapore Straits Times reported today.

The Singapore daily noted that the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) government hoped to raise as much as RM6 billion from publicly listing the federal land authority in March next year.

But complications from Felda’s business ventures abroad, including a US-based vegetable oil processing company called Twin River Tech, have thrown a spanner in the works.

Felda had acquired the plant in 2007 for RM241.4 million and was mulling selling it off to plantation giant Sime Darby, but the plan is also held up due to pricing issues.

“Trimming the problem assets would make the listing more attractive, but finding buyers isn’t going to be easy,” the paper reported an anonymous senior banker close to the Felda restructuring plan as saying.

It said Sime Darby’s Thai partner, PTT Chemical International — in another US-based oleochemical company — would unlikely support the proposal.

It cited another anonymous banker as saying: “The (Felda) management has set end-March as the target for the listing. We will be lucky if we get it down by May.”

According to ST, these complications were likely to add to the rising protests from some of the 113,000 Felda settlers who collectively own the controlling 51 per cent stake in the company and represent a crucial voting group.

The crux of the matter, the paper reported, was because of Felda’s complex corporate structure.

Felda Global Ventures Holdings, which handles many of the loss-making business ventures abroad, has a direct 49 per cent share in the main company called Felda Holdings.

Felda Holdings is the money-spinning enterprise that handles the agricultural and plantation-focused side of the business in the country and is owned by the politically powerful settlers’ co-operative Koperasi Permodalan Felda, the Singapore paper observed.

It noted too that Umno, the BN’s lynchpin party, had long depended on the co-operative members to deliver the votes in as many as 54 federal seats in the 222-member Dewan Rakyat.

But the opposition Pakatan Rakyat had in recent months made inroads into this Malay-centric vote bank and exposed many financial irregularities and mismanagement within the Felda corporation, and fanned a groundswell of distrust against the ruling BN bloc.