KL's pre-budget toll-rate hike makes it people-friendly

Kuala Lumpur

ALTHOUGH unpopular, Malaysia's move to hike toll rates on 17 highways just a week before the 2016 Budget reinforces Putrajaya's commitment to subsidy rationalisation and enables better focus and effect when the Budget is tabled on Oct 23, economists have said.

Hong Leong Investment Bank economist Sia Ket Ee, for example, said: "If you want to make the Budget as people-friendly as possible, you would do this outside the Budget."

Come Thursday, motorists - particularly those in the Greater Klang Valley where 15 of the 17 highways are - will have to cough up more to use the tolled roads, in some instances twice as…