China is open to slashing the cost and size of Malaysia’s $20bn East Coast Rail Link to save its keystone Belt and Road project in the country and preserve the initiative’s standing in the rest of the region, a senior Malaysian minister said.
“We understand that China understands our constraint and they are quite willing to scale down?.?.?.?the size of the project and also the cost of the project,” Saifuddin Abdullah, Malaysia’s minister of foreign affairs, on Tuesday told Bloomberg TV.
Official discussions between the two countries are set to take place next week, according to a senior official at Malaysia’s ministry of finance contacted by the FT.