Prime Minister Abe pitches for Singapore-KL high-speed railway

The pitch was similar to the one Abe had made when he met Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in September. The two Southeast Asian neighbours are working towards signing an agreement for the 350-kilometre-long rail link with a top speed of more than 300km/h at the annual leaders’ retreat next month.
Najib had stated on Wednesday that an international tender would be called by the fourth quarter of next year.
The high-speed railway, which is expected to cost more than 17 billion Singapore dollars (Bt425 billion), will slash travelling time between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur to just 90 minutes, compared with the current four-to-five-hour road journey.
“We had a very good discussion, and I expressed strong expectation regarding the adoption of Japan’s bullet-train technology,” Abe said as the Malaysian prime minister stood next to him.
Najib, in turn, lauded Shinkansen’s long track record of safety and reliability. 
“I have reassured [Abe] that the process to arrive at the final decision [on the contract] would be carried out in an open, transparent and objective manner,” he said.
Japan is drawing up a special financing package for its bid, Malaysia’s The Star reported this week. If its bid is successful, Japan has vowed to transfer its bullet-train expertise to Malaysia and Singapore.
Makio Miyagawa, Japan’s envoy to Malaysia, said: “We want you to be able to operate the high-speed rail on your own from the first day, and we want to create a good partnership with Malaysian industries.”
Heng Yee Kuang, a University of Tokyo international-relations professor, noted that Abe had called himself “Japan’s top salesman in pushing its infrastructure exports overseas”.
Japan and China are viewed as among the leading contenders for the railway, which is expected to begin construction in 2018 and start operations in 2026.
Last year, Japan lost a bid to China for a high-speed-rail development project in Indonesia, and Heng said Malaysia and Singapore might be monitoring the progress of that project for their subsequent decision on whom to award the tender.
Najib’s three-day working visit to Tokyo, which ends today, comes a mere two weeks after he signed 14 cooperation pacts worth 144 billion ringgit (Bt1.16 trillion) on a six-day trip to Beijing.
On that trip, he agreed to buy four Chinese patrol boats in Malaysia’s first significant defence deal with China.
Yesterday, Japan agreed to give Malaysia two used coast-guard patrol vessels, after a request by the latter’s maritime agency to “meet its urgent need of enhancing its capacity for further ensuring the maritime safety and security”, Tokyo said. One vessel will be deployed to Kuantan and the other to Kota Kinabalu.
Malaysia is one of the four Southeast Asian countries with conflicting territorial claims in the South China Sea with China, and Najib yesterday welcomed Japan’s move as one that reflects the “broad-based” nature of their bilateral ties.
“Malaysia continues to play its part to ensure the South China Sea will be an area of peace and stability, without which we cannot achieve prosperity,” he said.
Najib, who is also finance minister, said Malaysia was “on the same page” as Japan when it came to the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, which now appears unlikely given US President-elect Donald Trump’s protectionist stance. 
Scheduled talks between Abe and Trump in New York today are “very much awaited” by all signatories of the pact, Najib said, expressing hope that Trump will come to recognise the TPP’s strategic importance.
Earlier yesterday, Najib made a pitch for investments at a lunch with Japanese business leaders, saying Malaysia was “no longer competing at the low-technology level. We’re moving up the value chain and looking at higher-paying jobs.”
Last year, Japan was Malaysia’s fourth-largest trading partner.