This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on December 18, 2015.

GEORGE TOWN: The Penang government has been advised to respect the confidentiality clauses preventing the administration from declassifying land reclamation agreements signed during the previous administration, Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng said yesterday.

He said state legal adviser Datuk Aliza Sulaiman had made the recommendations after studying the agreements.

“To do so, we must seek the consent of the companies involved in the agreements. We will do that ... the LA (legal adviser) will see to it according to the law,” he said at a press conference yesterday.

Developer IJM has three deals with confidentiality clauses via subsidiary Jelutong Development Sdn Bhd: A privatisation agreement dated April 1997, supplementary agreement dated October 2002 and reimbursement land cost agreement dated January 2003.

The privatisation agreement gave the developer the right to build and complete the Jelutong Expressway (now known as the Tun Dr Lim Chong Eu Expressway), and reclaim 324.9 acres (131.48ha) for the purpose.

Another company, Tanjung Pinang Development Sdn Bhd, a subsidiary of Eastern and Oriental Bhd, also has confidentiality clauses in its agreements for the Seri Tanjung Pinang land reclamation project inked in the 1990s.

The state announced over a week ago that it would declassify all documents on land reclamations approved by the previous and present state governments.

Earlier this week, Penang Barisan Nasional chairman Teng Chang Yeow challenged Guan Eng to instruct the companies to waive their rights under the confidentiality clauses, as the federal government had done in 2007 under then prime minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi when it ordered highway concessionaires to waive their confidentiality clauses to enable Putrajaya to declassify the agreement documents.

“I think the people understand that the state cannot simply order the companies to waive the confidentiality clauses,” Guan Eng said.

He also said the state government would still declassify the agreements it had signed for 60 acres of land reclamation in Bayan Mutiara and Bayan Bay, which were not tied by any confidentiality clauses. — The Malaysian Insider