Hsien Loong to meet Mahathir in Putrajaya next month

SINGAPORE: Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad in Putrajaya next month at a leaders’ retreat, according to The Straits Times.

Quoting Lee, the news report said it would take place about 10 days after Dr Mahathir’s visit to Singapore for the five-day Asean Summit starting from Nov 11.

Lee also reportedly said that Singapore’s relations with Malaysia were stable.

“The High-Speed Rail (HSR) was an issue, potentially, but we worked out a two-year deferment for the HSR project and that was a constructive resolution of what could have been a spiky dispute,” Lee was quoted as saying by Bernama.

Lee was in Putrajaya on May 19, meeting with Dr Mahathir for the first time since the latter was sworn in as Malaysia’s seventh Prime Minister on May 10.

In Kuala Lumpur, Economic Affairs Minister Datuk Seri Azmin Ali said a series of discussions took place between the two governments before both agreed to postpone HSR until May 2020.

“We look forward to continuing with the project in 2020 and that was agreed by both parties,” Azmin told reporters at the Parliament lobby yesterday.

In December 2016, under the previous administration led by former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak, Malaysia signed the HSR bilateral agreement with Singapore.

The project was meant to cut travel time between the two cities and to spur economic growth.

Dr Mahathir’s Pakatan Harapan administration had initially expressed its desire to scrap the HSR project due to cost concerns, after claiming that it had inherited more than RM1 trillion in debt from the previous Barisan Nasional government.

However, Dr Mahathir then said the project might be postponed and not cancelled, considering Malaysia could not afford the compensation due to Singapore if the project was axed.