The BN team did not factor in an important element, that it's more expensive to build underground, he says.
PETALING JAYA: Accused by Barisan Nasional (BN) of deceiving Malaysians with the costs of MRT projects around the world, PKR vice-president Rafizi Ramli said it was the BN strategic communications team that was not being truthful.
The Pandan MP today defended as accurate his calculations that the Sungai Buloh-Kajang MRT (MRT-SBK) costs 2.5 times more than the Seoul Line 9 MRT.
The trained chartered accountant said his calculations went through the “normalisation” process to give a more accurate picture and comparison.
Rafizi said that based on the Halcrow study in 2000, the cost of an underground MRT was three times more than an elevated MRT for every kilometre.
The 37.5km Seoul Line 9 MRT, being completed underground, would have cost equivalent to a 112.5km long elevated MRT after the normalisation process.
“For each km, the normalised cost is US$50.7 million,” he said in a statement that showed how he calculated the projects’ costs.
For the 51km MRT-SBK, which is 80% elevated and 20% underground, the normalisation process will bring the length to 71km, Rafizi said, because 10km of the line would be underground.
With the 10km costing three times more, the normalised cost for each km of the MRT-SBK line stands at US$110.2 million, he said.
Rafizi also supplied a list of “official and valid” online sources he referred to for information on both projects.
“Wasn’t it a lie and stupid when the BN strategic communications team tried to bluff Malaysians blindly by comparing the cost of each kilometre for the MRT-SBK line and the underground Seoul Line 9 MRT without going through the normalisation process first?
“Based on honest calculations, it is clear that each kilometre of the MRT-SBK cost two-and-a-half times more than the Seoul Line 9 MRT,” he said.
The BN team had divided US$5.7 billion, the entire cost of the South Korean MRT line, by 37.5km to come to the conclusion that it only cost US$152 million to build each km of the underground line.
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