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Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Tony Pua: Why no open tender for Najib's 4 new tolled-highways


DAP information and economic chief Tony Pua
KUALA LUMPUR — The Najib administration should explain the tender awards process of four new tolled highways, amid reports of them being directly awarded, DAP MP Tony Pua said today.

The DAP national publicity secretary said that recent news reports on the tender acquisition of the four highways in Peninsular Malaysia proved that none of the projects were being tendered on a open and competitive basis.

“This piece of news comes as a surprise, first with the Government and Economic Transformation Programmes prioritising and focusing on public transportation, while secondly and more importantly there appears to be no indication at all that these projects are being tendered on an open and competitive basis as promised under the Prime Minister’s New Economic Model (NEM),” Pua said in a statement.

The Edge Financial Daily reported yesterday that PLUS Expressways Bhd would be the concession operator of two of the expressways, while Permodalan Nasional Bhd (PNB) would run the rest.

The highways to be operated by PLUS are from Sungai Dua to Juru in Penang, and from Kinrara to Damansara in the Klang Valley, while the PNB-operated highways are said to be from Ampang to Cheras and from Damansara to Sungai Buloh.

It is understood that the new toll highways are likely to be announced during Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s Budget 2011 speech on Friday.

“One doesn’t have to look into the NEM to see that the PM knows full well the negative impacts of a poorly managed, directly awarded privatisation exercises,” said Pua.

The Petaling Jaya Utara MP added that if the news reports of PLUS and PNB’s acquisition of the toll highways were true, it would contradict points of a speech given by Najib at the Jeddah Economic Forum back in 2007 when Najib was deputy prime minister.

According to Pua, the prime minister had then said that the government should push for competitive bidding for privatised assets and ensure that process was transparent and fair.

Najib (pic) is not following his own promise, claims Pua.
“There is nothing transparent about the tender awarding of the four new toll highways.

“Should the report by the Edge Financial Daily be true, then we fear that the government is clearly not making its best effort to help the rakyat increase their quality of living and reduce the cost of living by ensuring that toll tariffs are kept to the minimum and imposed only when necessary,” he said.

Pua said that Najib, as the finance minister, should explain during his upcoming budget speech on Friday if open tenders were actually going to be practiced for the awarding of mega-projects under the public finance initiatives (PFIs) or public-private partnerships (PPP).

The Najib administration has promised a slew of mega projects, under the Economic Transformation Programme (ETP) which will see a focus in the participation of the private sector.

The various projects in the ETP include the MRT system, the “River of Life” Klang River beautification project in the Greater KL region as well as future 1 Malaysia malls in China and Vietnam.

Other plans include building a huge oil storage facility next to Singapore to form a regional oil products trading hub. A casino project in Sabah is also being considered.

The Performance Management and Delivery Unit (Pemandu) said it had identified investments worth RM1.38 trillion over 10 years, of which 60 per cent would come from the private sector, 32 per cent from government-linked companies and eight per cent from the government.

The investment aims to double per capita income and push Malaysia into the ranks of “developed” nations by 2020, rebalancing Asia’s third-most export-driven economy towards domestic demand and the service sector. - Malaysian Insider

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