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The Kuala Lumpur-Singapore high-speed rail (HSR) project has attracted much interest from countries with the HSR technology, and Chinese companies are welcomed to continue to engage with both Malaysia and Singapore and participate in the tender later, a senior Malaysian official told Xinhua in a recent interview.
“We appreciate that China has developed the longest railway network now in the world and we have heard about the competitiveness of the Chinese companies,” Abdul Wahid Omar, Minister of the Prime Minister's Department who in charge of the Economy Planning, said.
The minister said that parties from China and other countries have demonstrated their interest to participate in the planning project, which will trim the door-to-door traveling time between the two countries’ capitals to within 90 minutes.
Abdul Wahid said that discussions are going on between Malaysia and Singapore to work on the details and overcoming the technical issues, adding that Singapore is expected to nail down the location of the terminal on its side soon, while Malaysia has already decided on their side for the terminal to be Bandar Malaysia, south of Kuala Lumpur.
“There will be a leaders retreat between our two prime ministers in Singapore on May 5. We hope that maybe by then Singapore would make a decision on the location of the terminal,” he said, adding that many issues beyond that still have to been worked down before the project can go to tender.
Abdul Wahid said that as a net exporter of oil and gas, Malaysia has been impacted by the drop in oil price this year, but the drop in oil price will not have any impact on the proceeding of the Kuala Lumpur-Singapore HSR project, as the rail project will also involve private sector, i.e. it will be a private-public partnership model with the government just funding part of the entire amount of the project cost. “So I think the requirement for funding from the government will be much less compared to if we were to do it as normal development expenditure,” he said.
Abdul Wahid was head of Malaysia’s leading bank Maybank before joining the government. He said Malaysia supports China’s initiative of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which will help ASEAN countries to fulfill the needs of infrastructure investment.
Malaysia was among the 21 countries that signed an agreement last year to establish the AIIB, whose prospective founding members have since hit 57.
“I know there was initial skepticism by some parties before, but I am happy that everybody has now embraced it including the World Bank.” Abdul Wahid Omar, Minister of the Prime Minister’s Department who in charge of Economy Planning, told Xinhua in a recent interview.
He pointed out that AIIB’s capital will be 100 percent dedicated to the investment in infrastructure, compared with the World Band and the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
“AIIB will complement the work that had been done by World Bank and ADB, and indeed it will enable many infrastructures be implemented, especially in the ASEAN region,” he said.
A study by ADB in 2009 predicted that Asian will need 8 trillion U.S. dollars on infrastructure investment between 2010 and 2020.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said this week that his country supports China’s efforts to promote an inclusive regional growth agenda through a series of initiatives, including the AIIB and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, “both of which are expected to increase investment flows into the ASEAN region.”
