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Sunday June 8, 2008 MYT 8:14:31 PM

Rising fuel prices: Mega projects to be reviewed

By YENG AI CHUN


BUTTERWORTH: The government will review some of the mega projects to reduce the country’s economic burden arising from the impact of the escalating global fuel price.

Second Finance Minister Tan Sri Nor Mohamed Yakcop said the review was one of the measures the government had to seriously look into to mitigate the rising fuel price.

“Projects planned by the government were based on the previous costs before the price increase. These projects might cost more now and we need to look over them again.

“But the government would still go ahead with people-friendly (mesra rakyat) projects that bring benefits to the people.

“We would look into everything before making a decision,” he said after launching the Tasek Gelugor parliamentary constituency service centre on Sunday.

On whether the second Penang bridge project would be affected, he said he did not know, adding that no decision had been made (as of Sunday) to cut any mega projects in Penang.

Nor Mohamed, who is Tasek Gelugor MP, said the government could not be constantly restructuring the country’s fuel subsidy package as the fuel price could wipe out whatever the government could save within days.

He said the government would also cut cost in its administration expenditure and avoid wastage.

“We saved RM13.7bil when the government announced the price hike on June 4 but we ended up paying more when the global fuel price went up two days later,” he said.

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