According to a report by Nikkei on the 15th, the Japanese government will participate in the international tender for the high-speed rail project connecting Malaysia and Singapore through a public-private joint fund. A Japanese corporate consortium consisting of JR East, Sumitomo Corporation and other companies is striving to win the order, and Japan will strengthen official financial support to enhance its competitiveness in the bid race.

Nikkei reported that the Japanese corporate consortium, composed of 10 companies, hopes to win the order for the approximately 350-kilometer Singapore-Malaysia high-speed rail. In December 2017, the governments of Singapore and Malaysia launched the tender process, and Japanese companies will submit their proposals by June 2018. Japanese companies believe that the project will require construction costs on a scale of 100 billion to 1 trillion yen (100 yen is approximately 5.8 yuan), and the Japanese public-private joint fund "Japan Overseas Infrastructure Investment Corporation for Transport & Urban Development (JOIN)" will provide several tens of billions of yen of that amount, with the public and private sectors working together to win the order. The report said that in the competition for infrastructure projects in Southeast Asia, Japanese companies in 2015 thought they were certain to win the order for Indonesia's Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail, but a Chinese company won the project at the last minute. According to analysis, Chinese, South Korean and European companies will also participate in the tender for this railway project, and the prospects remain unpromising.

According to a Reuters report on the 15th, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib are expected to discuss the Singapore-Malaysia high-speed rail matter when they meet on the 16th. The project will not only test relations between Singapore and Malaysia, but will also expose broader regional competition, with companies from China, Japan, Europe and South Korea all believed to be participating in the bidding.