The Government believes all of its investments should go through rigorous analysis in line with the principle of Competency, Accountability and Transparency (CAT). That was why upon assuming the role of Finance Minister, I immediately ordered a review of all Government-related projects, including TRX.
After the review, we presented to the Cabinet, which agreed that while we do the necessary detoxification of assets, we must allow these assets to proceed and not allow them to become collateral damage to the past excesses of the previous government. This project is the symbol of the successful isolation and quarantine of those projects which had certain issues so that those unconnected and unrelated can proceed based on market laws and the best international practices. So, rest assured, that TRX is detoxified. It has now been cleaned-up and is moving forward as a world-class, international, global project. Our Government is committed to rooting out corruption at all levels. This should be a signal that for those investors coming here. Rest assured, your investments are protected by the rule of law.
And above all, the review that we conducted on TRX showed that the Government will be able to recover all of its opportunity cost and investment made into TRX because of the global and best practices adopted by the present government. As a result, last year the Government agreed to provide TRX City up to RM2.8 billion additional funding to allow the company to complete the overall project, particularly for the completion of the world-class infrastructure at TRX.
I would also like to stress that the continuation of this project also shows that this administration honours the previous Government’s past agreements and welcome bone-fide investment into Malaysia, as well as world-class investors such as Lendlease from Australia.
The willingness of the 4 financial institutions to provide financing facilities to the project demonstrates how far TRX has gone ahead and how much progress has been made since the new Government took office on 9 May 2018. We are slowly, but surely exorcising the ghosts of 1MDB which has tainted Malaysia and allow us, once again, to be touted as the destination for both business and investment.
