THE finance, economic affairs and transport ministers will renegotiate the High-Speed Rail (HSR) project with Singapore, said Transport Minister Anthony Loke.
“We still negotiate with Singapore. (The three) ministers will go to Singapore to negotiate this deal,” Loke told a press conference in Putrajaya today.
Loke was asked about the remarks made by Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad in an interview with Japan’s Nikkei Asian Review that the government was merely postponing the project with Singapore.
In the interview, Dr Mahathir said Malaysia would benefit greatly from such a project.
“There will be a need for a high-speed rail in the future, probably right through the peninsula. But we cannot afford it at this moment.
“So, we actually postponed the implementation of the project,” he said.
Dr Mahathir’s comments are the first to indicate a softening of his administration’s earlier stance of scrapping the project entirely, a move which could incur hefty penalties into the millions.
Dr Mahathir told the Japan daily that while a high-speed rail would be useful in the future, its cost – which he placed at RM110 billion – was too high at the moment when Putrajaya was trying to reduce the country’s RM1 trillion debt.
– https://www.themalaysianinsight.com
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