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KUALA LUMPUR (Aug 1): The Republic of Singapore is not keen to review the price of water under a 1962 agreement with Malaysia.
The city state’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement yesterday that the review should have been done in 1987, a quarter of a century after the signing of the deal as was stated in the pact.
“This position was most recently set out in Minister for Foreign Affairs Dr Vivian Balakrishnan’s Parliamentary remarks on July 9, 2018," said the Singapore’s Ministry Foreign Affairs in a statement issued in conjunction with the official visit to Singapore of Malaysia’s Foreign Minister Datuk Saifuddin Abdullah.
In an interview with the Singapore daily The Straits Times (ST) last month, Saifuddin said Putrajaya is planning to restart negotiations on the pricing aspect of the 1962 water agreement.
He told the ST that "water is a long story" with "nothing concrete decided" and that "we will continue talking to" Singapore.
Malaysia’s Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad has criticised the water agreement with Singapore that allows the republic to extract nearly 60% of its water needs from Malaysia at a fixed price, describing it as being "too costly", and also saying that it was an issue "we need to settle", Bloomberg reported recently.
In a Channel News Asia report in June, Dr Mahathir also described the 1962 water sgreement as being “manifestly ridiculous. That was okay way back in the 1990s or 1930s”.
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