To help solve Malaysia’s housing woes, the Ministry of Transport intends to use 9,192 acres of land owned by its unit Railway Assets Corp (RAC) for residential developments, reported The Edge.
“I have requested RAC to come up with a list of their land that are available for development this Friday and I will submit the list to the Cabinet next Wednesday to seek approval for developing the land. Once we have gotten the approval, we will then call for open tenders for the lands,” said Transport Minister Anthony Loke during a visit to RAC’s office on Monday (25 June).
“However, we don’t encourage developers to build office blocks as we don’t want to see an oversupply of office space in Kuala Lumpur. So we hope for them to do more residential developments, especially affordable housing to allow more people to live nearby railways and use public transport to commute to work.”
Notably, RAC owns the land, rolling stock and railways of Keretapi Tanah Melayu Bhd (KTMB) and these assets are collectively valued at more than RM35 billion, he noted.
Loke revealed that RAC has a total of 31,712 acres of land along the KTM railways as well as in prime areas. Of this, 22,520 acres are reserve land, while 9,192 acres can be developed.
“We see a lot of potential in RAC as it owns a lot of land. Many of the lands are situated in urban areas and are worth a lot.”
“If RAC is able to generate more income through unlocking the value of its landbank, it will have more flexibility to develop our railway service and provide better service to the public,” he said.
However, he emphasized that development of RAC’s land parcels needs to go through a transparent open tender, unlike the previous administration, which gave in-principal approvals to developers to develop three land parcels in Pudu, Bangsar and Batu Tiga worth “hundreds of millions” of ringgit without undergoing this process.
“The approvals were given out through direct negotiations. But there is no commitment given and we will review all the approvals and ensure all the development on the lands will go through the process of open tender,” added Loke.
Image sourced from theworldnews.net
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