"The legal scrubbing (as) they call it is being done now.... you know putting it in legal context," Rafidah told journalists on the sidelines of a Singapore-Malaysia business seminar.

"We hope to have it signed by the two prime ministers when they meet at the ASEAN plus Japan meeting in Malaysia in December," she said.

Leaders and ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will meet with their Japanese counterparts as part of the inaugural East Asia Summit process to be held in Kuala Lumpur in December.

Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and his Japanese counterpart Junichiro Koizumi signed an outline of the FTA after the two countries overcame major differences in a number of sectors, particularly the auto industry.