“You need the appropriate data to make this kind of call,” said Jerry Chan, the Immediate Past Chairman of the Penang Real Estate and Housing Developers’ Association.

Speaking to FMT, he said MRCA was probably relying only on its own data and that such data would be limited to information on present and projected retail margins.

But the government would have its own data, he said, and these would include information on projects that had been approved, projects under construction and the amount of retail space currently available.

“A lot of developers and investors may have already put in a lot of money and made plans to develop new malls,” he said. “They would have taken out loans. If you change things halfway, what will these people tell the banks?”

He also pointed out that not all malls were the same. He said different malls would have different concepts and different targeted market segments and some would be better located than others.

Chan said a freeze on licences could not be made effective immediately even if the government agreed to it after reviewing the data in its possession.

“The pace of development in Malaysia is much faster than in other countries,’” he said.

The call for a freeze was made on Wednesday by MCRA Deputy President Valerie Choo. She noted that Indonesia had decided to freeze shopping mall development because an oversupply had slowed the growth of its retail industry.

She said the number of malls in Malaysia was likely to increase between 2017 and 2018 and this would put a strain on retailers’ profit margins.