KUALA LUMPUR: The government has decided to reinstate the Bandar Malaysia Project following a Cabinet meeting on April 17.
Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said the project, with an expected gross development value (GDV) of RM140 billion, was revived with some adjustments to its original plan.
“When we conducted our investigations, we found that the company, which was doing the preliminary works on Bandar Malaysia project, was actually not a Chinese company.
“The Chinese (company) only owned 25 per cent in that company. That is why we changed our stance to reinstate the project,” Dr Mahathir, who is also the Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (Bersatu) chairman told reporters at Yayasan Al-Bukhary, near here, today.
The original master developer of the project is a consortium consisting of Iskandar Waterfront Holdings Bhd and China Railway Engineering Corp Sdn Bhd (IWH-CREC).
The Prime Minister’s Office today announced that the Bandar Malaysia Project, which was terminated in May 2017, would be reinstated with some changes.
Dr Mahathir said Bandar Malaysia would have a significant impact on Malaysia’s economy and would serve as a global hub to further attract high impact global finance, technology and entrepreneurial firms.
“It will draw major international financial institutions, multi-national corporations (MNCs) and Fortune 500 companies to locate their regional headquarters in Bandar Malaysia.
“In addition, tech giants such as Alibaba and Huawei have also manifested interest to establish their ICT (information and communications technology) centres,” he said.
When asked on the new cost of the project, Dr Mahathir said the consortium was in the process of outlining the details.
“The company would have to pay the government for the land they have acquired.
He said the original plan would be changed to include 10,000 affordable housing units, a people’s park, bumiputra participation throughout the project and priority for the use of local content and materials.
Asked why the government did not offer the project through open tenders — a policy embraced by Pakatan Harapan, Dr Mahathir said the government felt that the original contractor had been unfairly terminated.
“We feel that we did wrongly towards the company, which is a Malaysian company.”
On whether the project would house a terminal for the Kuala Lumpur-Singapore High Speed Rail (HSR), Dr Mahathir said the rail project had been postponed for two years.
“If we do build the HSR (eventually), there will be sufficient room for the station.
“(For now) The contract (to develop the HSR) has not been given out,” he said.