Wednesday, May 07, 2014

Tony Pua: Khairy’s attempt to paint the federal gov't a saint a joke

Highlights:

'Only BN politicians, who were responsible for signing a completely lopsided privatisation agreement benefiting its cronies will care less about the plight of the people suffering from unjust price hikes.  We are not talking about a 5% hike every three years.  We are talking about an agreement which allows SYABAS to raise rates by a whopping 37% in 2009, 25% in 2012 and 15% in 2015.

With the monopolistic state-backed opportunity to raise rates like there, there was clearly little incentive for the company to be interested in coping with non-revenue water which was the highest in the country.'

'Worse, a national audit report on SYABAS which the Federal Government refused to declassify - found damning evidence of abuse of expenditure on luxury cars, excessive non-water related expenses, as well as breach of the private concession agreement through millions of ringgit worth of directly negotiated tenders and undocumented expenses.'

'The Selangor Government did the most logical thing by offering in 2009 to acquire all the water concessionaires on terms in accordance with the privatisation agreements.  However these concessionaires were not satisfied with the compensation which gave them a minimum 12% return on capital as specified in the contract, and demanded instead for compensation for the loss of future profits.  If we agree to pay for the loss of future profits, which was not required in the concession agreements, then we might as well not bother with the takeover exercise at all!

Khairy is mischievous to forget the fact that the BN Federal Government went out of its way to back these water concessionaires against the Selangor, which led to an impasse of the takeover exercise. In 2011, when these water concessionaires were unable to repay their loans amounting to RM6.5 billion, the Selangor Government had offered to take over these companies and their debts.  Instead, the Federal Government decided to bail out these concessionaires by paying for the RM6.5 billion debt. With the concessionaire relieved of their immediate debt obligations, these water concessionaires did the only logical thing to maximise profits – that is to stall on the takeover exercise and demand a king’s ransom.'

Rest of his article:
http://en.harakahdaily.net/index.php/letter/8889-khairys-attempt-to-paint-the-federal-govt-a-saint-a-joke.html
Link

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