KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 15 — The Japanese government will be providing financial backing to the country’s 10-company consortium for its bid for the Malaysia-Singapore high-speed rail (HSR) link project worth up to US$9 billion (RM35.6 billion), a report has said.

Japan’s public-private fund Japan Overseas Infrastructure Investment Corp for Transport and Urban Development (JOIN) is expected to support the consortium — where companies like East Japan Railway and Sumitomo Corp have banded together — that is seeking to win tenders for the project, the Nikkei Asian Review said.

Japan plans to submit its proposal for the project by June and has estimated that the project cost will range between hundreds of billions of yen to about ¥1 trillion (US$9 billion), the report said.

It said the JOIN fund — which was set up in 2014 — may bear up to tens of billions of yen of the total project cost.

Malaysia and Singapore had on December 20 launched a tender process for the designing, building, financing, maintaining of the rolling stock and rail assets for the 350km-long Kuala Lumpur-Singapore HSR project.

The deadline for the tender is June 29, with the rail link scheduled to be ready for use in 2026.

The Nikkei Asian Review said others expected to join in the tender process are groups from China, South Korea and Europe.