Getting Things Moving With MRT3; OVERWEIGHT

  • Maintain OVERWEIGHT. Top Picks include Gamuda, Sunway Construction, and Binastra. The Final Railway Scheme for the Mass Rapid Transit 3 (MRT3) circle line has been formally signed and approved by the Transport Minister Anthony Loke – marking a major milestone of the project. Post approval of the Final Railway Scheme for MRT3, the land acquisition process would begin and is expected to be completed by end-CY26. As such, we envisage MRT3 contract awards and construction to likely commence in CY27.
  • Prior to the approval of the Final Railway Scheme, the public inspection exercise was held from Sep to Dec 2024, during which Malaysia Rapid Transit Corporation (MRT Corp) received over 45,000 written feedback submissions. An overwhelming 93.3% of the feedback expressed support for the project – reflecting strong public and stakeholder endorsement, according to MRT Corp. The three-month public inspection exercise was done in accordance with Section 84 of the Land Public Transport Act, which features detailed information, ie alignment maps, site plans, and project details.
  • Based on the feedback received from the public inspection exercise, MRT Corp has made several improvements to the placement of stations and viaducts along the project’s alignment, as well as the design of the MRT3 Circle Line’s rail system. During the public inspection exercise held from Sep to Dec 2024, 32 stations were planned for MRT3 – 22 elevated, 7 underground, and 3 provisional ones with an alignment spanning 51km (39km elevated, 12km underground). MRT Corp highlighted that land acquisitions have been reduced from 1,012 to 690 lots, and improvements were made to station and viaduct placements along the alignment.
  • Key beneficiaries of MRT3 can be divided into the first-liners (main contractor) and second-liners (subcontractor). Based on track records in the previous MRT1 and MRT2 projects – contractors such as Gamuda, Sunway Construction, IJM Corp, Malaysian Resources Corp, WCT Holdings (WCT MK, NR), Gadang Holdings (GADG MK, NR) and Mudajaya Corporation (MDJ MK, NR) are expected to be the first-liners. Meanwhile, builders such as Econpile, Gabungan AQRS, Kimlun Corp (KICB MK, NR) and TRC Synergy (TRC MK, NR) could play a role as subcontractors under the MRT3 project.
  • We envisage some details on MRT3 to be announced during the upcoming tabling of either the 13th Malaysia Plan (31 July) or Budget 2026 (10 October), ie the funding mechanism, latest estimated cost, and also if a fresh round of re-tendering is required. Recall that in the revised Budget 2023 (tabled in Feb 2023), the Government announced an intention to review the cost of the MRT3 project in the hope of reducing the total amount to below MYR45bn from the estimated MYR68bn in 2018.
  • Key downside risks to our sector call are unexpected slowdown in job rollouts and labour shortages.