Bandar Malaysia set to take shape with funding

SINGAPORE: Malaysia is set to break ground on its largest real estate development, the multi-billion-dollar Bandar Malaysia project that will showcase the country’s growing economic ties with China.

Businessman Tan Sri Lim Kang Hoo, whose Iskandar Waterfront Holdings (IWH) secured rights in late 2015 as master developer of the project together with China Railway Engineering Corp (CREC), noted that the initial funding of RM10bil has already been lined up.

Ground works for infrastructure development will begin as soon as “two or three loose ends” with the Malaysian and Chinese governments are tied up in the coming weeks.

“Meeting the conditions, such as approvals from Bank Negara for overseas loans and the degazetting of the land, has been very time-consuming. But we are almost there,” Lim told The Straits Times last week before heading off to Beijing to meet his Chinese bankers, who would provide the bulk of the project’s initial financing.

Located on 196.7ha of prime real estate that currently houses a military airstrip, army barracks and other military installations on the fringes of Kuala Lumpur, Bandar Malaysia will be a purpose-built integrated township featuring residential complexes, subterranean shopping malls, a financial hub and indoor theme parks. It will also house the terminus for the planned high-speed rail connecting Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.

Separately, Beijing-based CREC is proposing to build an RM8.3bil regional headquarters in the new township that promoters said would generate a gross development value of RM160bil over a staggered construction timetable that will stretch 25 years.

This massive undertaking comes at a time when there are growing concerns that Kuala Lumpur could see a serious oversupply of commercial property in the near future.

Just next door to Bandar Malaysia, developers have begun work on a new financial district called the Tun Razak Exchange that will cover roughly 28ha of prime real estate. – The Straits Times/ANN