Why no mention of East Coast Expressway in budget, says Tuan Ibrahim

Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man said the government should have dealt with major issues affecting the public, such as the LPT3 expressway project, when tabling the budget. KUALA LUMPUR: An opposition MP this evening questioned why the 2027 budget made no mention of the proposed East Coast Expressway 3 project.

Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man (PAS-Kubang Kerian) said the government should have dealt with major issues affecting the public, such as the LPT3 expressway project, when tabling the budget.

“Overall the budget was okay, it touched on many things. But one issue often raised is the LPT3 project. There was no mention of it,” he told reporters outside the Dewan Rakyat.

The government has previously stated that the proposed 122km highway would be developed under a build-operate-transfer concession model, although no concessionaire has been appointed.

Tuan Ibrahim also questioned why development plans for the regions were disproportionate, saying the 2027 budget focussed only on certain sectors.

The former environment and water minister also lamented that little attention was given to climate change despite it being a huge challenge the country needed to tackle.

He said existing flood mitigation projects used designs based on a 50-year average recurrence interval (showing a 2% change of a major flood occurring in any given year) when it should be based on a 100-year model.

Budget allocations for flood relief must be doubled under the latter model, otherwise flood mitigation projects would fail, he said.