The Kuala Lumpur- Singapore high-speed rail (HSR) project has aroused interest of potential bidders, and Chinese companies are welcome to participate in the tender, said a senior Malaysian official.
 

"We appreciate that China has developed the longest railway network now in the world and we have heard about the competitiveness of the Chinese companies," Abdul Wahid Omar, minister of the Prime Minister's Department who in charge of the economy planning, told Xinhua in an interview.
 

The minister said parties from China and other countries had demonstrated their interest to participate in the planned project, which would trim the door-to-door traveling time between the two countries' capitals to within 90 minutes.
 

Abdul Wahid said discussions were underway between Malaysia and Singapore to work on the details and the technical issues, adding that Singapore was expected to nail down the location of the terminal on its side soon, while Malaysia had decided on their side for the terminal to be Bandar Malaysia, south of Kuala Lumpur.
 

"There will be a leaders' retreat between our two prime ministers in Singapore on May 5. We hope that maybe by then Singapore would make a decision on the location of the terminal," he said, adding that many issues beyond that still had to been worked down before the project could go to tender.
 

As to the Malaysian economy, Abdul Wahid said Malaysia was on its way to achieve the Economic Transformation Program launched by Prime Minister Najib Razak in 2010 to raise the country into the high-income economy category by 2020 by targeting Gross National Income per capital of 15,000 U.S. dollars.