Singapore Senior Minister of State at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and The Ministry of National Development Sim Ann (centre) together with members of the Malaysian media during the 16th Malaysian Journalists' Visit Programme in Singapore.
SINGAPORE: Agencies from both sides of the Causeway are working hard to resolve longstanding issues, says the republic’s Senior Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and National Development, Sim Ann.
She said frequent contact, coupled with the blessings of the leaders of both nations and hard work by their officials, would lead to progress.
Sim said Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong spoke about the important but complex relationship between the two countries when he addressed the KL Business Club recently.
“He talked about structural differences in our societies. But the key thing is to be able to manage the differences that we might have and not to allow these differences to affect the overall relationship or cooperation, because both our countries understand that it is far better to cooperate than not to cooperate,” she told a media delegation participating in the Malaysia Journalists Visit Programme to Singapore recently.
Sim was asked to comment on the two countries agreeing to accelerate the process of finding solutions on issues such as the water agreement and maritime boundary delimitations during Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong’s visit to Malaysia in June.
Asked if Singapore would also review its treated water rate from the current 50 sen if Malaysia increased the sale price of raw water from 3 sen for every 1,000 gallons, she said this was best addressed by the agencies involved.
On the Special Economic Zone between Johor and Singapore (JS-SEZ), Sim said this proved the strong collaboration between Singapore and Malaysia.
“The fact that we are discussing new projects such as the SEZ shows that it makes a lot of sense for both sides to continue to look for ways to further expand that collaboration, and bring about more convenience for businesses, producers and consumers on both sides,” she added.
To a question on Thailand’s and Malaysia’s intention to join BRICS, she said it was every country’s right to decide which grouping to join.
“As far as Singapore is concerned, our stance towards any of these groupings is that within the South-East Asian context, we always place emphasis on Asean centrality while noting that there are other regional groupings and other types of groupings aside from Asean,” she added.
BRICS is an intergovernmental organisation comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates.
Figures from Singapore’s Ministry of Trade and Industry showed that Malaysia was Singapore’s third largest trading partner last year with bilateral trade amounting to S$123.6bil (RM432.6bil).
Last year, Singapore was Malaysia’s largest source of foreign direct investment (FDI), contributing RM43.7bil or 23.2% of Malaysia’s FDI.
Singapore was Johor’s second largest foreign investor and contributed to around 70% of the state’s FDI for the first six months of 2022.
