Tan Sri Dato’ Johari Abdul, the Speaker of the Malaysian Parliament, announced on Thursday that he had visited Boustead Naval Shipbuilding earlier that day. The Lumut, Perak shipyard is where Boustead is building the KD Maharaja Lela, the lead ship of the Royal Malaysian Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship program.
Tan Sri Johari was accompanied by the chairperson of Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, Datuk Mas Ermieyati Samsudin, deputy chairperson Wong Shu Qi, and other members of the Public Accounts Committee on the working visit.
During the visit, Tan Sri Johari and the Public Accounts Committee members were briefed on the progress on KD Maharaja Lela by Royal Malaysian Navy Littoral Combat Ship program director First Admiral Franklin Jeyasekhar Joseph, and Boustead Naval Shipbuilding CEO Captain (Retired) Azhar Jumaat.
In a statement on his official Facebook page following the visit, Tan Sri Johari said that the Public Accounts Committee was fully committed to monitoring the progress of the Littoral Combat Ship project, and he would make sure that the latest project progress report would be debated in Parliament during the upcoming session that starts on October 9.
On Friday, Datuk Mas Ermieyati confirmed that the project progress report to be debated would cover developments between October 2022 and May 2023. She welcomed Tan Sri Johari’s move to have the report be debated in Parliament, saying in a statement that it demonstrated that Parliament would proactively serve as a check and balance to the executive branch. The debate will also be the first time in Malaysian history where a Public Accounts Committee report will be debated in addition to being presented to lawmakers in Parliament.
Neither statement provided any details on whether Boustead Naval Shipbuilding had restarted work on KD Maharaja Lela. While Defense Minister Dato’ Sri Utama Mohammad Hasan told Parliament on September 18 that work on the ship would restart in the fourth week of September, neither Boustead nor the Royal Malaysian Navy have officially announced the continuation of work as of writing.
Malaysia’s LCS program
The first in-class-ship was ceremonially launched in August 2017 but the program has faced delays since. The design is based on Naval Group’s Gowind corvette but the “Malaysian LCS” will be classified as a frigate as it is slightly larger. Six vessels were ordered and five were initially expected to be delivered by August last year, but not a single one is in the water.
According to the new schedule, the first ship is now set to be delivered in August 2026. A contract to restart work on the project, which had been halted since 2019 due to financial problems at Boustead, was signed in May at the 2023 Langkawi International Maritime and Aerospace exhibition. In addition to the agreement to relaunch construction on the ships, the deal canceled one of the six Littoral Combat Ships on order, and started a process where Boustead Naval Shipbuilding will be nationalized through its sale to the Malaysian Finance Ministry at a symbolic price of RM1 in exchange for the government paying off the shipyard’s debts. On October 4, Boustead Heavy Industry Corporation, the shipyard’s parent company, announced that the nationalization process would require an additional 30 days to complete the divestiture of BNS to the Finance Ministry.