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I only hope that "Malaysians see water issue more clearly now" as reported in the news today. They have recently been inundated by fuzzy and irrelevant arguments on this issue that will only serve more to confuse the uninformed.

What are the Malaysian authorities trying to achieve by equating the amount of water that is being sold at 3sen per 1000 gallons in order to be able to buy common food items such as Big Macs and "nasi lemak"? After all, the Malaysians should be glad that Singapore is willing to pay them millions of dollars for water, that they are not capable of processing themselves and would otherwise just flow into the sea, unused.

Also, what does it cost Malaysia to produce this untreated water? Absolutely nothing!
Therefore 3sen per 1000 gallons which was the agreed price for this water should be a good deal for them. We have to imply that they think that this is so, only until 1998 when someone on their side all of a sudden decided that a price revision was required.

The water agreements between Singapore and Malaysia which were signed in 1960 and 1961, and specifically allowed for water price re-negotiations 25 years later, in 1986 and again in 1987. Since Malaysia did not exercise these options to revise the price of water (not once, but twice), we have to assume that they were satisfied with the income from the sale of water all along, until after the year 1998. Anyway the Malaysians do not seem to know how much should be the price to sell the raw water to Singapore, since they keep on changing their minds, even after at some point in the negotiations having agreed to a price.