Mahathir Revives Singapore Water Dispute ; But Did You Know S’poreans Subsidizes Clean Potable Water Sent To Malaysia?
In an interview with Bloomberg Television, Malaysian PM Dr Mahathir Mohamad spoke of his wish to renegotiate the Malaysia-Singapore 1962 water supply treaty. As he have said many times in the past, Dr Mahathir insists that the agreement was unfair to Malaysia and wanted to settle it like civilised people with his Singaporean counterparts.
With the present agreement, Malaysian sells raw water to Singapore for 3 cents per unit and Dr Mahathir believes it to be too low and has constantly tried to change the terms of the agreement. However, what Dr Mahathir and many often conveniently forget to mention is how cheaply Singapore is selling potable water to Malaysia.
Simple Breakdown:
- Singapore’s cost of buying raw water from Johore is 3 cents per 1000 gallons.
- To process the raw water into clean potable water, PUB spends $2.40 per 1000 gallons.
- This clean potable water is then sold to Johor at a cheap rate of 50 cents per 1000 gallons. Subsidizing Malaysia $1.90 per 1000 gallons of clean potable water.
- The Malaysian government then resells the clean water to its people at $3.60 per 1000 gallons. With this agreement, Malaysia makes a cool $3.10 per 1000 gallons by buying Singapore’s cheap potable water and reselling it for a profit.
Taking all these often forgotten ‘minute’ details into account, is it still entirely true that Singapore is taking ‘advantage’ of Malaysia’s generosity when it sold Singapore cheap raw water, or was it for Malaysia’s own self-benefit too? Some may even call this agreement a mutual benefit, don’t you think?
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