ECRL to roll on but Putrajaya hopes for lower price, says Finance Minister

KUALA LUMPUR (June 23): The government wants to renegotiate so that the cost of the controversial East Coast Railway Line (ECRL) can be reduced, said Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng.

Lim also revealed while talking with the news portal The Malaysian Insight that the ECRL will have to proceed given the cost already poured into mega project.

“In the ECRL, we have already paid RM20 billion. So it doesn’t really make sense to just scrap it because we’ve already paid RM20 billion,” The Malaysian Insight reported Lim as saying.

“It’s one of the projects were are looking to renegotiate.”

Meanwhile, the fate of the Kuala Lumpur-Singapore high speed rail (HSR) continues to be uncertain as it is still being reviewed.

“Review means that it may not go on. That it may be deferred. Re-negotiating means we are talking about pricing," Lim clarified.

The finance minister however did not want to reveal details on how much the government wants the price of the ECRL to be reduced to.

“Let us discuss this first. We cannot have these discussions in public. The negotiations have to be done behind closed doors,” Lim said

Some parties have claimed that the ECRL could be constructed for below RM40 billion but the price tag had been inflated to RM70 billion.

The Pakatan Harapan-led government, especially Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, had been critical of numerous mega projects started by the previous government.

A high profile project that has already been dumped is the RM40 billion MRT3 line.

Dr Mahathir was already not a fan of the ECRL and openly questioned its feasibility even before his coalition took Putrajaya after GE14.

“If we think logically, who wants to spend 14 hours on a train from Kota Bharu, Kelantan to Port Klang, Selangor compared to approximately 30 minutes by flight?”, Dr Mahathir said in April.  

The ECRL spans 688km and is supposed to cover parts of Selangor, Pahang, Terengganu and Kelantan.