KUALA LUMPUR, May 1 — Putrajaya today issued the preliminary report on Flight MH370 that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak pledged last week to release, and accompanied this with the cargo manifest and audio recordings to radio transmissions from the missing flight.

Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein yesterday said the report would be presented to the Cabinet today, with a view of making it available to the public.

“The prime minister set, as a guiding principle, the rule that as long as the release of a particular piece of information does not hamper the investigation or the search operation, in the interests of openness and transparency, the information should be made public. 

“The internal team has concluded its review. As a result, the following information regarding MH370 is being released,” Hishammuddin said in a statement today.

The cargo manifest was a source of controversy earlier on, when Malaysia Airlines was accused of trying to hide that lithium-ion batteries, a possible fire hazard, were in the plane’s cargo hold.

The audio recordings also address a discrepancy over the last words issued from the cockpit of the plane.

Other documents included in the cache were a report detailing the action taken between 1.38am and 6.14am when the plane disappeared on March 8, a map showing MH370’s flight path, and the seating plan for the 227 passengers on board.

In an interview with CNN last week, Najib told the global news channel’s aviation expert Richard Quest that the report, now in the hands of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), will be made publicly available.

“I have directed an internal investigation team of experts to look at the report, and there is a likelihood that next week we could release the report,” Najib said, according to CNN’s online report of the interview.

Previous refusal to disclose the contents of the report and associated information had fuelled the mistrust and suspicion over Malaysia’s handling of the search for the missing plane.

Searchers scouring the vast swathes of the remote Indian Ocean off the coast of Perth in Australia have yet to find any evidence of MH370, and have begun scaling back the search for the plane that has been missing for nearly two months.