Malaysia will implement the Road Charge (RC) for all foreign-registered vehicles entering the country, including from Indonesia, said Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai.

Liow, who is also MCA president, said the rate would be RM20, same as the fee imposed on vehicles entering from Singapore.

"We introduced this to protect our country. We are not implementing it for Singapore alone, but also for vehicles registered in Thailand and Indonesia (that come into Malaysia).

"All our borders will introduce the RC," he told the media after officially opening MCA's Temiang service centre in Seremban today.

Also present was MCA national Youth chief Chong Sin Woon.

On Thursday, Liow had said that vehicles entering Malaysia from Thailand would be imposed the road charge, starting from June this year.

Malaysia imposed the RM20 RC at the Causeway and Second Link from Nov 1.

However, Singapore claimed that imposing the RC on vehicles coming from the republic alone was discriminatory, introduced its own Reciprocal Road Charge of S$6.40, which takes effect on Feb 15.

The city-state later said that it would lift the RRC once Malaysia imposed the RC at all Malaysia's land borders.

"I'm happy with their response, that they will not introduce the RRC if we take up a non-discriminative approach.

"From the very start, I told the Singapore government that we are not discriminating against Singapore.

"We introduced this basically to ensure the safety of our traffic and vehicles coming from Singapore to Malaysia," he said.

Liow also said this was also to get rid of the problem of cloned cars and to ensure all outstanding summmonses are settled before the foreign-registered cars leave Malaysia.

- Bernama