“It is a top priority for them,” he said in a Facebook post dated yesterday.

Hishammuddin also posted a video from the defence ministry of him receiving a letter of commitment from a representative of the French government.

He said the event was an important development, especially in the six-month plan to revive the project as decided by the Cabinet in April.

He also said France’s commitment was in line with the recommendation of several parties, including the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) and the Cabinet, to continue the LCS project “for the sake of the navy”.

In April, the Cabinet agreed to an LCS project recovery plan, which allowed a mobilisation period of six months.

This was aimed at enabling negotiations with the original equipment manufacturers and vendors to finalise the LCS procurement according to navy requirements.

The LCS project made headlines last month when PAC reported that RM6 billion had been spent since 2014 but none of the ships had been completed or delivered as scheduled.

The defence ministry had awarded a RM9 billion contract to Boustead Naval Shipyard Sdn Bhd (BNS) in December 2011 for six ships as part of the navy’s fleet renewal plan.

A contract was signed in July 2014 and BNS was to build the ships with the help of French naval company DCNS beginning in 2015. DCNS has since been renamed Naval Group.

The first vessel was slated to be delivered by April 2019, and the five ships were to be handed over in six-month intervals until 2023.

Work is now proceeding on the ships in Lumut, Perak.