By G. Sharmila
Azman Mokhtar
Government investment arm Khazanah Nasional Bhd today said that there are currently no plans for intense financial reporting from toll concessionaire PLUS Malaysia Bhd.
To a question on if Khazanah has plans to make PLUS’ annual report public, Khazanah managing director Azman Mokhtar replied: “I think whether there needs to be the kind of intense quarterly reporting like we have in Malaysia Airlines Bhd, probably not, although it doesn’t preclude obviously for public and national interest, in this case PLUS or UEM or the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) should be making statements and working with the government.”
Azman was speaking to reporters following a media briefing on the government investment arm’s 2014 annual review.
PLUS was taken private in November 2010 by Khazanah and the EPF in a RM23 billion buyout by the two institutions. Khazanah’s wholly-owned unit the UEM Group owns a 51% stake in PLUS, while the rest of the concessionaire is owned by the EPF.
Azman acknowledged that there was public interest in PLUS financials “especially during these times of rising living costs, etc”.
“I think we are sensitive, I think the earlier restructuring itself in many ways anticipated the issues around rising costs of living and so forth.
“On the other hand, we have to be fair and to be proportionate for market impact to the bondholders of large listed companies. So the delisting itself and making sure the bondholders were fairly treated, that whole process was done,” Azman said.
“Hopefully we’ve demonstrated both the desire and the ability to restructure these things to balance carefully between public capacity for this and to make sure that the right commercial efficiencies are put in place, and also taking into account in this case, the government’s fiscal position and being able to balance it.
That’s basically what has happened to PLUS. There are still bondholders right now, much of it EPF so we also need to honour and respect that. There are sufficient reserves for now, going forward, we need to sustain that,” Azman said.
Azman pointed out that the toll rate increase ideally would have been 5% for every three years.
“As you know, that works out to under the consumer price index rate. But we appreciate that people are going through tough times and these are not easy times. So in that regard the sensitivity is yes, we will work with the government and we will work with our partners like the EPF,” he concluded.
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