PM Lee (seen here with Malaysian PM Najib Razak) is confident about the success of the HSR project, despite having acknowledged the difficulties involved.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong believes cost sharing of the High Speed Rail (HSR) project is one of the factors making the project complicated, since there are two countries involved, reported Channel NewsAsia.
As such, Malaysia and Singapore must have a sound agreement on how the project is structured, backed and executed.
“It is like the project from London to Paris, the Channel Tunnel,” he said in an interview with Bernama on 28 November. “When you have two authorities involved, you have to decide how to partition, where the line is drawn. I build my part, you build your part, and we have to meet at the same point. If it does not meet then we have a big problem.”
While he described the project as “very ambitious, very complicated and very expensive”, Mr Lee shared that both countries have made “very good progress” with their discussions.
“We are almost there, and I hope that when I meet Prime Minister Najib at the next retreat, we will be able to sign the agreement. That is the first requirement, that we have a very good agreement which sets out clearly a sound basis to build and operate the system.”
He noted that evaluating the bidders would be very difficult since there are several HSR systems — namely, from China, Japan and Korea — that have been lobbying very hard to secure this contract.
Cheryl Marie Tay, Senior Journalist at PropertyGuru, edited this story. To contact her about this or other stories, email cheryl@propertyguru.com.sg
