Wee urges govt to take back ownership of HSR, Bandar M'sia development

Former transport minister Wee Ka Siong has urged the government to take back ownership of the Kuala Lumpur-Singapore High-Speed Rail (HSR) and Bandar Malaysia projects.

He said the existing plan to have the private sector develop and run the HSR may not be viable and result in more delays that deprive the country of the project’s economic and social benefits.

In a Facebook post today, Wee said the Eurostar London-Paris HSR took 20 years before it started generating profits, which he doubted any private company could wait for.

However, he said the answer to the issue of the project being too expensive for the government lay in the Bandar Malaysia project.

“The HSR project cannot be looked at in isolation. It must be viewed together with the RM140 billion GDV Bandar Malaysia project which is also the terminus station for the HSR.

“The original idea is for profits of the very viable Bandar Malaysia project to cross-fund the HSR project.

“In fact, if it is done properly then the profits of the Bandar Malaysia project can easily pay for the entire or a substantial cost of the HSR project,” he said.

Single consortium

As such, he said the government should consider taking back ownership of both projects and allow it to be developed by a single consortium.

He added that Putrajaya should also consider involving the Singapore government and its government-linked companies as a project partner, which he claimed could make Bandar Malaysia more viable and encourage more Singaporean firms to move part of their operations to the country.

Last year, in his Budget 2024 speech, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim announced that the government would take over Bandar Malaysia to ensure that the project was optimally used for people’s projects.

However, its status as a HSR station is unknown.

2016 agreement

The KL-Singapore HSR bilateral agreement was signed in 2016.

Construction was suspended in September 2018 under the Pakatan Harapan government, which sought extensions up to the end of 2020.

Then in 2021, the Muhyiddin Yassin administration - which took over in March 2020 - officially axed the deal with Singapore after negotiations during the Covid-19 pandemic fell through.

Wee was the transport minister at the time the deal was canceled.

One of the matters the Muhyiddin administration objected to was the jointly tendered asset company with Singapore.

Under the AssetsCo model, Malaysia and Singapore must jointly call for an international tender to appoint a suitable company to take the role of AssetsCo.

The Muhyiddin administration then mooted re-aligning the HSR to connect with Thailand instead.

When the Madani government took over, Wee’s successor Anthony Loke said that Putrajaya was open to the original KL-Singapore railway plan.

However, the Madani government’s stance remained that it must be privately funded with no loan guarantees from Putrajaya.

Yesterday, MyHSR Corporation said the outcome of the feasibility study of the project would be announced in the fourth quarter of this year.

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