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Malaysian climber Wui Kin Chin is being transferred from a helicopter to the hospital for treatment after being rescued form Mount Annapurna in Kathmandu, Nepal April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Navesh Chitrakar
April 26, 2019
By Gopal Sharma
KATHMANDU (Reuters) – A rescue helicopter plucked a Malaysian climber from Mount Annapurna in west Nepal on Friday, where he was stranded for two days after climbing the world’s tenth highest mountain this week, officials said.
Wui Kin Chin, 48, an anesthesiologist, reached the top of the 8,091 meter (26,545 feet) mountain along with 31 other international climbers on Tuesday but then failed to descend to a lower camp.
A helicopter pilot spotted him on Thursday waving his hands from an altitude of about 7,500 meters (24,606 feet). Four sherpa rescuers climbed to the site and brought him down to a lower camp from where he was picked up by a longline rescue helicopter.
Mingma Sherpa of Seven Summit Treks, that provided local support to the climber, said the distressed mountaineer was flown to a hospital in Kathmandu on Friday.
“He is conscious but critical,” Mingma, who goes by his first name, told Reuters without giving details of how the climber survived on the mountain for two nights before the rescuers reached him.
Rescuers said bad weather and getting clearance from an insurance company caused delay in the rescue.
Hiking officials say fickle weather and frequent avalanches make Mount Annapurna a dangerous and more difficult to climb mountain than Mount Everest. Dozens of climbers have died on the mountain since it was first summited in 1950.
Hundreds of foreign climbers are on different Himalayan peaks in Nepal during the current climbing season which ends in May.
Mountain climbing is a key source of employment and income for the cash strapped nation, home to eight of the world’s 14 highest peaks, including Mount Everest.
(Reporting by Gopal Sharma; Editing by Martin Howell)
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FILE PHOTO: Malaysia’s Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah attends an ASEAN-U.S. Ministerial Meeting in Singapore August 3, 2018. REUTERS/Edgar Su
April 23, 2019
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – Malaysia is hopeful of getting more “fair” investment from China, its foreign minister said on Tuesday, after both countries agreed to resume two multi-billion dollar projects just before a Belt and Road conference in Beijing this week.
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who came to power after a stunning election victory last May, had vowed to renegotiate or cancel what he calls unfair Chinese projects authorized by his predecessor.
Earlier this month, both countries agreed to resume construction of the East Coast Rail Line (ECRL) at a discount. Last week, Mahathir announced the resumption of a multi-billion dollar property development linked to China.
“We want to improve our ties with China. That is a fact. But it doesn’t mean we will do whatever it takes,” Malaysian Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah told Reuters in an interview.
“Agreements and arrangements have to be fair for both sides,” he said.
The minister said ties between the countries had improved since the resumption of the two projects – both part of China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a key policy of President Xi Jinping that envisions rebuilding the old Silk Road to connect China with Asia, Europe and beyond with massive infrastructure spending.
Mahathir will travel to Beijing on Wednesday to attend a forum on the Belt and Road initiative.
Mahathir and the Malaysian delegation are also expected to hold a bilateral meeting on the sidelines with Xi, premier Li Keqiang and Li Zhanshu, the chairman of the standing committee of the national people’s congress, according to the Malaysian foreign ministry.
Saifuddin, who will be part of Malaysia’s delegation, said Malaysia is open to Chinese investments from “any sector”, but particularly in high-tech manufacturing.
He said Malaysia is also optimistic that China will increase its imports of Malaysian palm oil, on top of an increase of 500,000 tonnes premier Li had pledged during Mahathir’s last visit in August. Palm oil is a key Malaysian export.
“We are hopeful that with the BRI conference and the positive closure of the two projects, we would be receiving more investments from China,” Saifuddin said.
(Reporting by Joseph Sipalan; Editing by Frances Kerry)
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A worker stands in front of Jakarta-Bandung High Speed Railway exhibition hall at Walini tunnel construction site in West Bandung regency, West Java province, Indonesia, February 21, 2019. REUTERS/Willy Kurniawan
April 23, 2019
By Fanny Potkin and Tabita Diela
WALLINI, Indonesia (Reuters) – In a rural part of Indonesia’s Java island, two orange-clad workers confer in Mandarin over plans to lay tracks on a stretch of a $6 billion high-speed rail project between the capital Jakarta and the textile hub of Bandung.
Both are employees of the state-owned China Railway Engineering Corp (CREC), and have previously worked on a rail project in Uganda, another part of Beijing’s sweeping multi-billion dollar “Belt and Road” initiative (BRI) to connect China with Asia, Europe and beyond.
Delayed for nearly three years over land ownership issues, construction on the 142 km (88-mile) Indonesian line finally kicked into high gear in 2018.
When China hosts its second summit of nations that are part of BRI this week, Beijing is likely to showcase the Indonesian project along with its recent success in getting Malaysia’s East Coast Railway Link (ECRL) back on track after months of negotiations.
Analysts say the two projects will be held up as China’s answers to criticism about high debt and the lack of transparency in the BRI and its attempt to refocus the program on sustainable financing, green growth, and high quality.
China’s foreign ministry said last week Beijing would “work together with all parties to benefit people across the world by jointly promoting the high-quality development of BRI in line with the national conditions of each country”.
The BRI is a key policy of Chinese President Xi Jinping but has been controversial in many Western capitals, particularly Washington, which views it as a means to spread Chinese influence abroad and saddle countries with unsustainable debt through nontransparent projects.
According to a draft communique seen by Reuters, participants at this week’s summit will agree to project financing that respects global debt goals and promotes green growth.
“This bucks the trend of recent negative headlines around the BRI and challenges facing projects in several countries,” said Peter Mumford at the Eurasia Group consultancy.
But in Malaysia, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed agreed to put the 668-km ECRL back on track only after cutting the cost of the project from $16 billion to $10.7 billion.
“The risk for China is that other countries, having seen Mahathir’s success, now try to adopt similar tough re-negotiating tactics on BRI projects, which could slow progress elsewhere,” said Mumford.
To be sure, there is no sign of any of the BRI countries attempting to re-negotiate deals signed with Beijing. Analysts say China is likely to use its willingness to work with partner nations and make projects feasible to seek more business.
“GOLD-PLATED”
Bankers familiar with the deal say the Indonesian project is being constructed under “gold-plated terms”.
Of the total $6 billion cost, China’s Development Bank will provide a $4.5 billion loan at 2 percent interest, according a project prospectus seen by Reuters. The remaining 25 percent of the project cost will be funded by equity provided by the consortium.
The loan will have no sovereign guarantees, which are among the most controversial parts of Belt and Road projects, as they shift risk onto the governments of partner countries.
Beijing lobbied hard against Tokyo in 2015 to win the Indonesian project as a way to showcase its high-speed rail expertise to international customers.
“China wanted to deliberately show that its fast train was better than Japan … we asked for the lowest rate possible and they gave 2 percent,” Rini Soemarno, Indonesia’s minister for state-owned enterprises, told reporters earlier this year.
The railway’s financial terms came under debate during April’s presidential election between Indonesian President Joko Widodo and challenger Prabowo Subianto, who pledged to review the project if he pulled off a victory.
While the results are still to be officially confirmed, sample vote counts by independent pollsters show Widodo to be headed for a second term.
At the project site, there seem to be no doubts that it will be completed. Deep in Indonesia’s tea country, workers are directing drilling machines into a hillside, displacing red earth to carve out two tunnels that will lead to the station of Wallini, a tea plantation near Bandung.
Chinese workers there told Reuters they had been at the site for a year and expected to stay until the project’s completion in 2021. Four new satellite towns will be built by the train consortium along the route.
Widodo’s government is currently offering up to $91 billion in infrastructure projects to Chinese companies, according to Luhut Pandjaitan, the coordinating minister for maritime affairs, who said Chinese officials have toured regional governments in search of projects to fund.
Two top officials told Reuters Widodo intends to lead a delegation to the Belt and Road forum, where some of those projects are expected to be signed.
One of the officials, Indonesia’s investment board chief, Thomas Lembong, told Reuters he expected this week’s summit to be a turning point, a “Belt and Road 2.0” with China more willing to negotiate.
“The Chinese leadership will do whatever it takes to make Belt and Road a success, even if that means making it more professionalised, transparent, and more cooperative,” he said.
THE SINGAPORE LINK
The revival of the Malaysian project is likely to give China hope of securing another train project: the high speed rail (HSR) between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, which was postponed by Mahathir after he initially threatened to cancel it.
“China will likely take heart from the ECRL outcome and focus their efforts on ensuring that the Kuala Lumpur-Singapore HSR remains on track,” Harrison Cheng, an analyst at Control Risks, told Reuters.
Beijing had been intent on being awarded the project to prove that its rail expertise could win over rivals in a first-world country like Singapore, with its diplomats describing it as a “must win at all costs project”.
Apart from CREC, consortiums from Japan, South Korea, Europe, Singapore and Malaysia are also in the race, if the project is revived.
A source in the Singaporean government said Malaysia would have to pay significant penalties to cancel the project altogether.
Mahathir as well as Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong will take part in this week’s Belt and Road summit, which could see China make a renewed push for the project.
(Reporting by Fanny Potkin and Tabita Diela in JAKARTA and WALLINI; Additional reporting by Gayatri Suroyo and Cindy Silviana in JAKARTA, Sumeet Chatterjee in HONG KONG, Brenda Goh in SHANGHAI, Joseph Sipalan and Liz Lee in Kuala Lumpur, and Joe Brock and John Geddie in SINGAPORE, Editing by Ed Davies and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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A worker carries election materials with a trolley to be distributed to polling stations from a warehouse in Jakarta, Indonesia, April 16, 2019. REUTERS/Willy Kurniawan
April 16, 2019
By Fanny Potkin
JAKARTA (Reuters) – More than 10,000 people have volunteered to crowd-source election results posted at polling stations across Indonesia on Wednesday in a real-time bid to thwart attempts at fraud during the biggest single-day election in the world.
Nearly 193 million people are eligible to vote for the Southeast Asian country’s president and thousands of legislative seats, a Herculean logistical feat many fear could be exploited by cheats.
Tension over alleged election irregularities is already running high between the camps of the two contenders for the presidency, incumbent Joko Widodo and retired general Prabowo Subianto, with charges of suspicious names on electoral rolls and ballot tampering.
An organization called Kawal Pemilu, or Guard the Election, has brought together volunteers from across the sprawling archipelago to post on its website photographs of result tabulations that go up at polling stations to ensure they match official vote tallies.
The crowd-sourced results on KawalPemilu.org will then be tabulated manually by the organization.
“We aim to be the data back-up plan for the election,” Kawal Pemilu co-founder Elina Ciptadi told Reuters. “To ensure transparency and stop fraud.”
She said that more than 10,000 volunteers have been verified and 3,000-5,000 more have registered online to join the “election guardians”, who are required to provide their names and Facebook profiles. Another 2,000, many of them Indonesian expatriates, will work as moderators, logging in data.
University student and alumni groups have pledged to help, as have the youth wings of prominent religious organizations, including of the Catholic Church, and of the two largest Muslims organizations, Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama.
Ciptadi and data scientist Ainun Najib, both Indonesian expats who live in Singapore, started the initiative after the last election in 2014 – also a contest between Widodo and Prabowo – when both campaigns declared victory.
“Both sides claimed to win … but neither of them were revealing the data,” said Ciptadi.
Because the electoral commission (KPU) had posted 2014’s polling station results on its website, the group was able to scrape numbers into a database and crowd-source accurate results in six days, while officials took more than two weeks to calculate almost exactly the same result by hand.
EIGHT-HOUR ELECTION
This time the challenge is even greater.
For the first time Indonesia will be holding presidential and parliamentary polls simultaneously, with more than 245,000 candidates running for legislative seats in an exercise that will involve more than 800,000 polling stations and about 6 million election workers.
While the world’s largest democracy, India, is now spreading its election out over seven phases, Indonesia – with roughly one-fifth of India’s population – will get the job done in just eight hours.
The General Election Commission is expected to announce an official result in May.
Ciptadi stressed that her organization was strictly neutral.
“We are not a political movement, we are an open-data initiative,” she said.
Most opinion polls give Widodo, a former furniture salesman whose political career began as a small-city mayor, a double-digit lead over Prabowo, whom he narrowly defeated in 2014.
The opposition has disputed survey findings. It has also said it uncovered data irregularities affecting millions on the electoral rolls and vowed to take legal action or use “people power” if its complaints are not resolved.
“We are very worried about the issue because the number is huge, there are 17.5 million problematic names in the voter list,” Hashim Djojohadikusumo, deputy director for the Prabowo campaign, told reporters on Sunday.
He said that suspiciously large numbers had Dec. 31 and Jan. 1 birth dates, and area codes that did not exist.
A spokesman for the election commission refuted the allegations, telling Reuters they had verified the existence of the 17.5 million voters, as based on civil records.
Several videos appeared online last week apparently showing thousands of voting papers stuffed in bags at a warehouse in neighboring Malaysia, with many apparently already marked.
One showed people holding up ballots, saying they were marked in favor of Widodo, as well as for a member of one of the political parties backing him.
The election supervisory board met Malaysian police on Monday to discuss the case, media reported.
The supervisory board is also deciding whether to hold a new vote for Indonesians in Sydney, after several hundred registered voters were still standing in line after the polls closed there on Saturday.
A rights group has warned that more than 1 million indigenous people, many of whom live in forest areas or conflict zones, won’t be able to vote because authorities had not registered them.
The Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago, which represents 15 million indigenous people, told Reuters that several communities had never been registered for electronic identification cards, which provide the right to vote.
A home affairs ministry spokesperson disputed those findings and said any indigenous person who wanted to vote could register. “Please live in a legal location,” he said.
(GRAPHIC: Indonesia election by the numbers – tmsnrt.rs/2V4DCqq)
(Reporting by Fanny Potkin; Additional reporting by Yerica Lai, Agustinus Beo Da Costa, Fanny Potkin, and Jessica Damiana; Writing by John Chalmers; Editing by Robert Birsel)
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FILE PHOTO: Malaysia’s Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad reacts during an interview with Reuters in Langkawi, Malaysia March 28, 2019. REUTERS/Feline Lim
April 13, 2019
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – Malaysia’s ruling coalition lost a state constituency in a by-election on Saturday in a further sign of declining public support for Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s alliance.
It is the third defeat for Mahathir’s Pakatan Harapan coalition, or Alliance of Hope, in local elections since it took power in May last year.
Its candidate, Streram Sinnasamy, lost the Rantau constituency in Negeri Sembilan state by 4,510 votes to Mohamad Hasan, the acting chairman of Barisan Nasional, the main opposition coalition.
Mohamad was appointed to the post after scandal-plagued former prime minister Najib Razak led Barisan Nasional to its first defeat in more than 60 years in last year’s national election.
Mohamad had won Rantau unopposed in 2018, but a Malaysian court later found errors in electoral procedure and called for a new poll.
His win is the latest blow for Mahathir’s coalition, which has faced criticism for failing to deliver on promised reforms and protecting the rights of majority ethnic Malay Muslims.
Polls consistently show that the coalition has been losing support among the Malays, some of whom fear that affirmative-action policies favoring them in business, education and housing could be taken away.
Anwar Ibrahim, a former deputy prime minister who is widely expected to succeed Mahathir, had actively campaigned in Rantau in a bid to garner support away from Mohamad, seen as a highly popular figure among Malays.
Meanwhile, Najib, an active public presence during two previous by-elections, was largely absent on the Rantau campaign trial as he faced the first of several corruption trials earlier this month.
Najib is facing more than 40 charges of money laundering and other offences over the alleged loss of billions of dollars from state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad.
(Reporting by Rozanna Latiff)
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FILE PHOTO: Vietnamese Doan Thi Huong, who was a suspect in the murder case of North Korean leader’s half brother Kim Jong Nam, reacts as she leaves the Shah Alam High Court on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia March 14, 2019. REUTERS/Lai Seng Sin
April 13, 2019
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – A Vietnamese woman who had been accused of killing the half-brother of North Korea’s leader will be freed from a Malaysian prison on May 3, her lawyer said, a day earlier than previously expected.
Doan Thi Huong, 30, was charged along with an Indonesian woman of poisoning Kim Jong Nam by smearing his face with a banned chemical weapon at Kuala Lumpur airport in February 2017.
Malaysian prosecutors dropped a murder charge against Huong earlier this month, after she plead guilty to an alternate charge of causing harm.
She was sentenced to more than three years in jail, but the term was later reduced as Malaysian law can allow a one-third remission off prison sentences.
Huong, who had been expected to be freed on May 4, will be released a day earlier as the original date fell on a weekend, her lawyer, Salim Bashir, told Reuters.
“We were informed by the prison authorities that she would be released on May 3, and it is likely she will be flown back to Hanoi on the same date,” he said, when contacted.
Huong’s co-accused, Siti Aisyah, was freed in March, after prosecutors also dropped the murder charge against her.
South Korean and U.S. officials have said the North Korean regime had ordered the assassination of Kim Jong Nam, who had been critical of his family’s dynastic rule. Pyongyang has denied the allegation.
Defense lawyers have maintained the women were pawns in an assassination orchestrated by North Korean agents. The women said they thought they were part of a reality prank show and did not know they were poisoning Kim.
Four North Korean men were also charged, but they left Malaysia hours after the murder and remain at large.
Malaysia had come under criticism for charging the two women with murder – which carries a mandatory death penalty in the country – when the key perpetrators were still being sought.
(Reporting by Rozanna Latiff; Editing by Joseph Radford)
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A customer hands a 50-Indian rupee note to an attendant at a fuel station in Ahmedabad, India, October 5, 2018. REUTERS/Amit Dave
April 11, 2019
By Nikhil Nainan
(Reuters) – A tale of two elections saw investors raise their bullish bets on the Indian rupee over the past two weeks while long positions on the Thai baht unraveled to their lowest this year, a Reuters poll showed.
Foreign investors have plowed billions of dollars into India ahead of an election process spread over seven phases and ending only toward the end of next month with nearly 900 million people eligible to vote. The process begins on Thursday.
Investors, who only turned bullish on the rupee at the start of March for the first time in nearly a year, have since raised their long positions to their highest since January of last year, the poll of 14 respondents showed.
The prospect that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party will manage to just about win a parliamentary majority has sparked net inflows of over $8 billion into equities so far this year as of April 9. More than half of the inflows occurred in March alone.
On the other hand, Thailand, which is still reeling from the fallout of uncertainty surrounding its election at the end of March, has seen investors unwind some of their long positions on the baht gradually built up during the first two months of the year.
The baht, however, still remains the best performing currency so far this year among its regional peers, gaining about 2.5 percent thus far.
Final results of the Thai election will be announced on May 9.
“Two-directional risk remains high and both currencies could still move either way depending on how the election news develops over the next few weeks,” said Julian Wee, a South Asia investment strategist at Credit Suisse.
(Graphic: Foreign flows into India and Thailand – https://tmsnrt.rs/2X2bO6Y)
Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest economy, also heads into elections next week with investors turning bullish on the rupiah once again after a month’s hiatus.
Elsewhere, investors trimmed long positions on China’s yuan to their lowest since turning bullish in January.
There has been progress toward a trade deal between China and the United States but U.S. officials say there are still important issues for the countries to address. However, the fallout from the months-long trade war has resulted in weak economic data, posing concerns for the health of the global economy.
In response, China has undertaken massive stimulus measures to reinvigorate its economy, which analysts at HSBC say will boost growth as it filters through in the coming quarters.
The Asian currency positioning poll is focused on what analysts and fund managers believe are the current market positions in nine Asian emerging market currencies: the Chinese yuan, South Korean won, Singapore dollar, Indonesian rupiah, Taiwan dollar, Indian rupee, Philippine peso, Malaysian ringgit and the Thai baht.
The poll uses estimates of net long or short positions on a scale of minus 3 to plus 3. A score of plus 3 indicates the market is significantly long U.S. dollars.
The figures include positions held through non-deliverable forwards (NDFs).
(Reporting by Nikhil Kurian Nainan, additional reporting by Gaurav Dogra; polling by Niyati Shetty and Mensholong Lepcha in Bengaluru; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)
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FILE PHOTO: A woman walks past a logo of Felda in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia February 7, 2018. REUTERS/Lai Seng Sin/File Photo
April 9, 2019
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – Malaysia’s state palm oil plantation agency, the Federal Land Development Authority, is seeking 6 billion ringgit ($1.5 billion) from the government to help turn itself around, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.
The request will be included in a white paper on the company scheduled to be introduced in parliament on Wednesday, Bloomberg reported, citing a source. If approved, the funds would be paid out in stages, the report said.
Felda, as the state-owned company is known, has been struggling to pay down debt amid financial losses and corruption allegations.
The government of Mahathir Mohamad, who came to power last year after defeating Malaysia’s longtime ruling coalition, had vowed to look into Felda’s financial troubles and alleged graft.
Felda and Malaysia’s Ministry of Economic Affairs, which is preparing the white paper, did not respond to requests for comment on the Bloomberg report.
Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng told reporters on Tuesday the government had to support Felda as the previous government had caused “huge losses”. He did not elaborate.
Felda was set up to help palm oil farmers, who work for the agency, and also has a one-third stake in FGV Holdings Bhd, the world’s largest crude palm oil producer.
Palm oil farmers on Felda land have been grappling with rising costs of living and high debt due to insufficient income.
Felda has diversified in recent years into property, including hotels, both locally and overseas, but has been plagued by issues of poor management.
Last year, Felda said it would sell assets including property in London, restructure some loans, and try to boost cash flow to trim nearly $2 billion in debt.
A former Felda chairman was charged in December with breach of trust and receiving bribes over the purchase of a Malaysian hotel while he was in charge of Felda.
The Mahathir government has said it would investigate several “highly suspicious” deals done by the previous administration, including the $500 million acquisition of a non-controlling stake in Indonesia’s Eagle High Plantations. The deal had drawn criticism as it was seen as overpriced.
(Reporting by Emily Chow, with additional reporting by Rozanna Latiff; Editing by A. Ananthalakshmi and Tom Hogue)
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Dozens of people, believed to be Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar who were dropped off from a boat are pictured on a beach near Sungai Belati, Perlis, Malaysia in this undated handout photo released April 8, 2019. Royal Malaysian Police/Handout via REUTERS
April 8, 2019
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – Thirty-seven people believed to be Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar were found on a beach in northern Malaysia on Monday, police said, the latest arrivals in what authorities fear could be a new wave of people smuggling by sea.
Dozens of Rohingya in Myanmar and Bangladesh have boarded boats in recent months to try to reach Malaysia, which had seen a decline in arrivals after a 2015 crackdown on trafficking.
Last month, 35 migrants were found on Sungai Belati beach in the northern state of Perlis.
On Monday, 37 men were detained around the town of Simpang Empat after landing at the same beach in the early morning, state police chief Noor Mushar Mohamad told Reuters.
“We believe they were traveling on a much larger boat, before being transferred into smaller boats at sea and taken to different places,” he said, adding the men were in good health and have been handed over to immigration officials.
More than 700,000 Rohingya crossed into Bangladesh in 2017 fleeing an army crackdown in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, according to U.N. agencies.
Myanmar regards Rohingya as illegal migrants from the Indian subcontinent and has confined tens of thousands to sprawling camps in Rakhine since violence swept the area in 2012.
Officials believe the migrants found on Monday are from Myanmar or Bangladesh.
“We are still investigating where the boats are coming from, but we suspect human trafficking syndicates are involved,” Noor Mushar said.
An outbreak of sectarian violence in Rakhine in 2012 prompted tens of thousands of Rohingya to flee Myanmar by sea. The exodus peaked in 2015, when an estimated 25,000 people fled across the Andaman Sea for Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, many drowning in unsafe and overloaded boats.
(Reporting by Rozanna Latiff; editing by Darren Schuettler)
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FILE PHOTO: A Firefly ATR 72-500 airplane approaches to land at Changi International Airport in Singapore June 10, 2018. REUTERS/Tim Chong
April 6, 2019
SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Singapore and Malaysia reached an agreement to end their months-long airspace dispute, the transport ministers of the two neighboring countries said in a joint statement on Saturday.
Under the deal, Singapore will halt instrument landing system procedures at its Seletar Airport, while Malaysia will open up a restricted area near the countries’ border.
“Singapore will withdraw the Instrument Landing System procedures for Seletar Airport and Malaysia will indefinitely suspend its permanent Restricted Area over Pasir Gudang,” the statement of Malaysian Transport Minister Anthony Loke and Singapore’s Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan said.
This will allow Malaysia Airlines’ subsidiary Firefly to start operations at Seletar Airport this month, the statement said. Media reports said the airline postponed its plans to fly out of Seletar Airport last year due to the dispute.
In December, Malaysia said it wanted to take back control of airspace managed by the city-state since 1974, as Singapore’s new instrument landing system at its small Seletar airport involved a flight path over Malaysian airspace.
The ministers also said in the joint statement that the two countries have set up a committee to review the 1974 airspace agreement.
Singapore was once part of Malaysia but they separated acrimoniously in 1965, clouding diplomatic and economic dealings for years.
In another dispute, the sides previously agreed to the establishment of a working group to discuss issues around port limits after Singapore protested in December about Malaysia’s plan to extend the limits of a port, saying it encroached on its territorial waters.
(Reporting by Fathin Ungku; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
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