Joint panel 'to focus on fuss-free access' to IDR

Smart card for speedy immigration clearance among priorities: KL envoy

By Cheong Suk-Wai, Assistant Foreign EditorThe Straits Times, May 23, 2007

HASSLE-FREE travel between Singapore and south-west Johor will be the core concern of the new joint ministerial committee which Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Malaysian Premier Abdullah Badawi agreed to set up last Tuesday.

Malaysian High Commissioner to Singapore N. Parameswaran told this to The Straits Times yesterday, after a seminar on investment prospects in the Iskandar Development Region (IDR) at Suntec City. The event drew close to 400 businessmen, bankers and bureaucrats from both sides of the Causeway.

The joint ministerial committee is meant to bolster cooperation between the two countries as they help the IDR take off. And crucial to its success is unfettered access and connectivity between Singapore and the IDR.

To a query on how the daily traffic congestion at the Causeway and the Second Link could be eased, Datuk Parameswaran said the two premiers had identified in Langkawi 'practical and concrete' issues which the committee would tackle.

The first would be how to introduce a smart card that will enable the citizens of the two countries to clear immigration speedily without the wait for their passports to be stamped.

As he put it: 'The idea is you move fast, we move fast.'

The second issue, which he said might be tackled sometime after the smart card issue, was how both countries could have common Customs, Immigration and Quarantine (CIQ) points so that their citizens need clear CIQ only once.

For instance, he pointed out, French citizens who flew through Geneva Airport in Switzerland could clear CIQ there because France was allowed to station its CIQ officers within the airport.

Last, but not least, Datuk Parameswaran said the committee would have to ponder, as he put it, fresh 'modes of communication' between Singapore and the IDR, which might even take the form of a shared LRT or MRT system.

'We will both work together to allow the connectivity.'

Transport networks make or break industrial areas, and Malaysia is bent on making the IDR work, having pumped a total of RM4.4 billion (S$2 billion) into redeveloping the 2,217-sq km zone in the hope that it will rev up the country's economic growth.

The government has said it needs to attract RM382 billion over the next 20 years for the IDR to succeed.

Singaporeans have already plonked down some money. IDR master planner and developer UEM Land, which organised the seminar, revealed yesterday that Singaporeans were among the economic zone's biggest investors to date.

UEM Land's managing director Wan Abdullah Wan Ibrahim, 48, told reporters after the seminar that Singaporeans had snapped up 35 per cent of the land plots in the IDR's posh 688-bungalow development Ledang Heights.

The next biggest buyers were Indonesians and Middle Easterners, although Mr Wan Abdullah was quick to add that investors from some 22 countries were in the queue.

Singaporean investors, including steel stockist HG Metal Manufacturing, had also bought RM45 million worth of industrial land, or 18ha, he said.

He also said he was 'swamped' with queries from prospective investors, including the owner of a chain of retail stores here and in Malaysia, and a pre-school principal.

Foremost on Singaporean investors' minds, though, is the issue of safety and security in crime-rife Johor.

Fielding many queries on the topic at yesterday's event, Mr Wan Abdullah assured them that the government had set aside RM500 million just to tighten security in the state.

Plus, he added, he was poised to announce a tie-up with an MNC next month, to build what he called 'a world-class security environment', which would include kitting the IDR out with crack surveillance gizmos.

Datuk Parameswaran told reporters his office would also step up regular chats with Johor's chief police officer on Singaporeans' crime concerns.

Other than the concerns over crime, Mr Wan Abdullah said he saw no 'big obstacle' in his drive to draw Singaporean investors to the IDR.

'It's a matter of awareness. We need to let Singaporeans know what we have to offer.'