Pakatan Harapan will incur a price tag of RM338 billion if it presses ahead with its plan to abolish all tolls nationwide, warns BN strategic communications deputy director Eric See-To.

See-To cited Finance Minister II Johari Abdul Ghani's response in Parliament based on a 2010 study, which showed taking over the toll concessions alone would cost RM45.2 billion, but abolishing all tolls could cost up to RM338 billion.

"What this means that it will cost RM45.2 billion to buy all the toll companies but will require another RM292.8 billion to pay back their outstanding borrowings as well as the compensation allowed in their concession agreements," he said.

For context, the national budget for 2018 is RM280.25 billion.

See-To said both Harapan and the public needed to understand that buying the concession companies alone was insufficient if they wanted to do away with tolls.

"You can't just close down the tolls as these companies have loads of borrowings and outstanding bonds which they took on when they constructed the highways.

"These bonds are typically held by funds such as Employees Provident Fund (EPF), Permodalan Nasional Berhad (PNB), Lembaga Tabung Haji or the unit trusts as well as loans from the commercial banks. 

"If the tolls are closed down just like that, the toll concessionaires have no income leading to these bonds to default. These funds and banks will experience huge losses which will impact on tens of millions of depositors," he said.

See-To said the government could not renege on signed agreements, as it would devalue any other agreement the government engaged in.

"Our financial markets will mark down all the companies that deal with our government as well as the bonds that are really such paper agreements signed by the government. 

"Our financial markets will be in turmoil and investors will desert us," he said.

He criticised the Harapan budget for not quantifying how it planned to do away with all tolls in the country.

He noted that it only touched on the North-South Expressway (Plus), which will cost an estimated RM36 billion to take over.

He pointed out that this was 5.3 times the total allocation of BR1M for next year.

See-To also pointed out that highway operator Plus Malaysia Bhd was already 51 percent owned by Khazanah Nasional Berhad and 49 percent owned by the EPF, and provided good yearly dividends to depositors.

"Most of the toll highways are based in Kuala Lumpur of the west coast of Malaysia whereas BR1M recipients and EPF holders come from the entire Malaysia.

"Why should people from the east coast states, Sabah and Sarawak, where there is no toll, sacrifice their BR1M payments and EPF dividends in order to subsidise the richer folks in the more developed west coast of Malaysia?" he said.

He stressed that Harapan's proposal was populist and a case of "zombie-nomics" which failed to account for its wider implications.