Ministry reduces Customs admin building construction costs

12th September, 2014

KOTA KINABALU: The Ministry of Finances value assessment management lab has successfully reduced the construction cost of the proposed new customs administrative building and its housing project in Sepanggar.

Deputy Finance Minister Datuk Chua Tee Yong (pictured) said The cost of the new customs building has now been slashed from RM76.6 million to RM75.9 million after being assessed by the lab.

Similarly, we have also reduced the original estimation of the housing project with three blocks of building from RM69.9 million to RM63.9 million.

The construction of the new building will start in October next month and is expected to be ready by early 2017, whilst the housing project with construction began in July this year will be ready in 2016.

The construction of the new customs building is an important project because now their office is located in a shopping complex in Tanjung Aru, he pointed out.

So in the long term, the new building will provide a conducive working environment for the customs staff, said Chua who is here on a one-day working visit and to monitor the implementation of the customs housing project and the soon to be carry out customs building.

The new housing project was carried out after the old quarters were declared unsafe and demolished, so the Ministry of Finance approved this plan to make sure the staff have a proper place to stay, said Chua.

He assured that the reduced cost would not affect the specification of the plan and the contractors also who briefed him during the visit had also given their assurance that the project would be ready on time.

As of now, the construction of the housing project had been carried out smoothly and we have achieved 6.15 per cent of the work which is ahead of schedule compared to 4.36 per cent that had been forecasted, he added.

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Ministry reduces Customs admin building construction costs