THERE are national considerations involved in the East Coast Rail Link (ECRL), so cancelling the project is not as easy as it sounds, said Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng.

He said the project has been renegotiated with the Chinese government, agreeing to cancel the multi-product pipeline and scale down the ECRL.

“I think this is a win-win solution. This involves the relations between Malaysia and China which is our largest trading partner.

“There are a lot of national considerations at stake,” he said today after opening the Malaysia Healthcare’s Medical Travel Market Intelligence Conference in Kuala Lumpur.

Last week, economist Prof Jomo Kwame Sundaram had said Putrajaya had no reason to commit itself to salvaging the ECRL project following the emergence of evidence in court on how the project was used to bail out 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).

He was referring to the testimony of Najib Razak’s former special officer Amhari Efendi Nazaruddin during the 1MDB trial last week.

Amhari had testified that the ECRL was among a few projects used to bail out 1MDB.

Jomo said Amhari’s disclosure should “fundamentally re-open everything” with regards to the ECRL, noting that the Pakatan Harapan government’s decision to re-launch the project with a reduced scope was done prior to the witness’ testimony.

“I think we have a huge opportunity now to reopen the whole question. I’m sure this is the time when we should not commit ourselves,” he told reporters after attending a function on Budget 2020 forum last week.

Jomo had said the revised cost of RM44 billion from RM66 billion for the project was not a trivial sum.

Lim said Jomo’s comments on ECRL were not wrong but Putrjaya had to look into other national considerations.

“You have these two big projects, one is obvious a no-go and the Chinese government had agreed that the project be cancelled and the other when we already paid RMB30 billion.

“We renegotiated the project so the price can be reduced so we don’t have to go court to talk about compensation.”

He said with the ECRL project, Putrajaya got to have something on the ground while maintaining good relations with China. – September 24, 2019.