Penang welcomes Putrajaya to take over mega transport master plan

GEORGE TOWN, June 9 ― Putrajaya is welcomed to take over the massive RM27 billion Penang Transport Master Plan (PTMP) for the sake of Penang, state executive councillor Chow Kon Yeow said today.

The local government and traffic management committee chairman said the Pakatan Harapan state government would willingly hand over the project if the Penang Barisan Nasional can convince the prime minister to take over the PTMP and make it a reality.

“If they say they want to take over so they can win the 14th general elections and wipe out the Opposition, I say go ahead, they can continue to implement the whole project,” Chow told reporters at a press conference in Komtar today.

The state is in the process of obtaining a RM1 billion loan from China via China Exim Bank as a bridging loan pending the reclamation of three islands off the southern part of the Penang island.

The reclamation of the three islands, called the Penang South Reclamation (PSR), was to finance the whole PTMP.

Chow admitted that the state government did not approach the federal government for a loan to finance the project pending the reclamation.

“We decided to go ahead with the request for proposal to appoint a project delivery partner and not wait for Putrajaya,” he said.

He added that Putrajaya did not implement the promised LRT projects, so the state had to proceed with its own transport plan.

He said when the state presented the proposed project to Putrajaya, the federal government did not object to it.

“The federal government is also happy that this does not involve federal financing and when the project was presented to the National Economic Council, no objections were raised,” he pointed out.

Chow also showed the media a letter by the Finance Minister dated May 31, 2016 requesting the state government to fine-tune its request for federal approval to obtain loan from China Exim Bank.

“As you can see, the finance ministry acknowledged the state's request and asked that the state take into consideration the conditions as laid down in Article 111(2) of the Federal Constitution,” he said.

There were three conditions, the first is that the state has to pass an enactment to give the state power to obtain loan, the second is for the federal government to negotiate this with the National Finance Council and finally, that the loan must not be more than five years.

“The letter ended with the Finance Minister asking the state to resubmit the application after finalising the business and financial model for the project for the consideration of the ministry,” Chow said.

The Penang state government had written to the finance minister on February 5, 2015 to seek the federal government's approval for the state to obtain loans from Exim Bank to help implement PTMP projects.

He said these were mentioned when the bill was tabled at the state legislative assembly and it was never disputed by the Finance Ministry.

“Clearly, the attempts by the state opposition to continue to raise doubts on this issue is to erode public confidence for the state government and to sabotage the efforts by the state government to mitigate traffic congestion projects in the state through PTMP,” he said.

Chow said the state will not take the loan if the PSR was not approved.

“If they don't approve it, this will all be part of a memory, we won't be needing the loan as the project will not go on,” he added.

The PTMP is an ambitious venture to address traffic and connection issues in Penang by linking the island and the mainland by mass rail transit systems, bus services and highways.

SRS Consortium has been appointed by the state government as the Project Delivery Partner.

 Under the business model submitted by SRS Consortium, PTMP projects will be implemented in two phases.

Phase one, from 2016 to 2023, costs RM17 billion and will consist of Bayan Lepas LRT and highway projects.

The PSR project was proposed to fund the whole RM27 billion PTMP and it consisted of reclaiming three islands off the southern coast of the island.

Two of the islands, A and B, will be reclaimed first to fund Phase one of the PTMP.

The Penang state government recently passed the Penang Loan (Banks and Other Financial Sources) Bill 2017 to enable the state to obtain loan directly from China as a bridging finance pending the reclamation projects.