KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 16 — It costs the Royal Malaysian Navy (RMN) RM100 million a year to maintain a submarine, the Dewan Negara (Senate) was told today.

Deputy Defence Minister Liew Chin Tong said this amount covered the operational and logistics support services.

"This cost also covers maintenance of RMN’s submarine dock in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah,” he said during the question-and-answer session here.

He was replying to a question from Senator Datuk Zahari Sarip about the amount of allocation to maintain a submarine belonging to the RMN.

Responding to a supplementary question from Zahari who asked if the government planned to increase the number of submarines, Liew said at present, this was not in the Defence Ministry’s plans. 

"We are not planning to increase the number of submarines even though there are five in Singapore and Indonesia, and six in Vietnam… we will stay with what there is,” he said. — Bernama