On 27 November 1990, in Singapore, the Points of Agreement on Malayan Railway Land in Singapore were signed between the Government of Malaysia and the Government of Singapore. The signatories were Lee Kuan Yew, Prime Minister of Singapore, and Tun Daim Zainuddin, Minister of Finance, on behalf of the Malaysian Government. It is a government-to-government agreement; it took effect on the day it was signed, without ratification. It is not the Linggiu water agreement, signed three days earlier.

Point 1: the station at Keppel will be vacated and moved, in the first instance, to Lot 76-2, next to the Bukit Timah Fire Station along Upper Bukit Timah Road near the junction with Jurong Road, as shown on Plan 1 and the Appendix. The Government of Singapore will help in the alienation of such lands as may be reasonably necessary for the station, provided that it is not necessary to acquire land which in the opinion of the MRA and the Government of Singapore has major permanent structures on it; if the MRA wants to acquire despite that view, the acquisition will be at market price.

Point 2: the land at Keppel will be vested in a limited company, M-S Pte Ltd, to be developed as residential and commercial land in accordance with the plans in Annex 1. Point 3: when the MRT reaches Woodlands New Town, the MRA may within five years move its station from Lot 76-2 to a site in Woodlands adjacent or close to the MRT station; then the two pieces of land in Kranji and Woodlands (Annexes 2 and 3) will be vested in M-S Pte Ltd. Point 4: Singapore's Land Office shall issue freehold land titles to M-S Pte Ltd in respect of the lands at Keppel, Kranji and Woodlands.

Point 5: 60 per cent of the shares of M-S Pte Ltd will be owned by a company designated by the Government of Malaysia and 40 per cent by a company designated by the Government of Singapore; development costs will be shared in the same ratio. Point 6: there will be no compensation for the MRA land; instead the three big pieces will be realienated to M-S Pte Ltd at no cost; whoever takes the land should clear the tracks and pay for the resettlement of squatters: for the three pieces, M-S Pte Ltd; for the balance of the MRA lands, the Singapore Government.

Point 7: in exchange for the MRA land at Keppel, a plot of equivalent value in Marina South will be offered to M-S Pte Ltd so that a prestigious building can be developed and retained as a long-term investment; if the land offered is, in the opinion of M-S Pte Ltd, not suitable, alternative sites in Marina South of equivalent value shall be offered, as in Plans 2 and 3. Appendix: the station at Upper Bukit Timah Road at Lot 76-2 should be economically built until, in the MRA's judgement, that is the best long-term location; the MRA may conclude that it is better to move the station in the first instance to Woodlands; when the MRT extends from Woodlands to Johor Bahru, the station can move there.

It is not the Memorandum of Understanding of 28 June 1988 on water, natural gas and the Changi ferry service, and not the Joint Statement of 24 May 2010, which later supplemented the agreement.

Image: Tanjong Pagar railway station, Singapore; alicereneztay, 19 June 2010; CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. Cropped to 16:9.

Source consulted: Malaysia-Singapore Points of Agreement of 1990. Treaty text: Points of Agreement on Malayan Railway Land in Singapore, 27 November 1990.