“When you have proposals from business entities, they have a profit element. If there is no profit element, they would not want to purchase,” he said, responding to a report that a consortium led by Hong Kong and Singapore-based private equity group has offered to take over PLUS.

A Reuters report said RRJ Capital had put in a RM3 billion bid for the expressway.

Lim said he had yet to see the proposals.

But he said his ministry has received other proposals from sovereign wealth fund Khazanah Nasional which are “more attractive” and beneficial to the public.

“At the end of the day, do you want the PLUS highway to be a public good or a private good?”

On the government’s progress towards overcoming the RM1 trillion debt, he said Malaysia was making “painful, difficult progress”.