Mahathir made the remarks at a press conference, saying it was "a final decision" to cancel the project, but Malaysia still had to talk to Singapore over a penalty concerning the withdrawal, Xinhua news agency reported.
Mahathir said the penalty was around 500 million ringgit ($126 million). In an interview with the Financial Times earlier, he called KL-SG HSR as one of the "unnecessary projects".
To control public spending, he also introduced a 10 per cent pay cut for his Cabinet ministers, abolished some organisations and vowed to terminate the contracts of some 17,000 public employees.
(This story has not been edited by Social News XYZ staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
