Economic affairs minister Mustapa Mohamed said the government was transferring the special purpose vehicle (SPV) entity in charge of the project from the Prime Minister’s Department to the ministry.

“Any discussions on the direction of the project will be handled by the transport ministry,” he said.

MyHSR is the wholly owned special purpose vehicle set up under the finance ministry to ensure the smooth delivery of the project.

Mustapa also said a study on the economic viability of the HSR between KL and Johor Bahru (KL-JB) was initiated in February and the report would be submitted to the Cabinet soon for a decision.

“The KL-Singapore HSR project is economically viable. Now it is to make sure if the KL-JB high-speed link will also be economically viable,” he said.

He was replying to an additional question by Rubiah Wang (GPS-Kota Samarahan), who wanted to know if a KL-JB link was still economically viable after the previous KL-Singapore project was terminated.

Mustapa said Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob and his Singaporean counterpart, Lee Hsien Loong, had discussed the project between both the countries in September, and Singapore was open to the idea but “it is still at the initial stages”.

In his original question, Lim Guan Eng (PH-Bagan) had asked if the KL-JB proposal would now be cancelled after talks on reviving the KL-Singapore link started.

Mustapa said even though the project between both countries was economically viable, Singapore could not accept Malaysia’s proposal to remove the services of Assets Company (AssetsCo), which had led to the termination of the project.

He had previously said Putrajaya could save 30% of the cost if it did not use the services of this assets company.