MyHSR Corp said the submission of concept proposals is in response to the request for information (RFI) exercise launched last July to invite local and international private sector players to deliver the project based on a public-private partnership initiative on the Design-Finance-Build-Operate-Transfer (DFBOT) model.

Following the RFI, the government is expected to shortlist the candidates within several months and start full-fledged negotiations with the Singaporean government by later this year at the earliest.

“The findings from the RFI evaluation will be presented to the transport ministry and the Cabinet for deliberation,” said MyHSR Corp chairman Fauzi Abdul Rahman in a statement.

“If the response is positive, we will move on to the second phase with the request for proposal (RFP) stage to obtain detailed proposals from the selected consortia.”

MyHSR, a company wholly owned by the Minister of Finance Incorporated (MoF Inc), previously set the deadline on Nov 15, 2023.

It extended the deadline due to requests from international and local industry players in recent weeks.

Malaysia and Singapore inked a bilateral agreement on the project on Dec 13, 2016, but terminated the agreement on Jan 1, 2021, after several delays.

The original project, which involved 350km of development, was to have shortened the land travelling time from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore to 90 minutes, compared to a four-hour journey by car at present.

The government has said it is open to reviving the RM100 billion project if it can find private investors.