Kota Kinabalu: The Sabah Government through its Ministry of Industrial Development & Entrepreneurship provides grants and relevant machinery for qualified enterprises to increase their production.
“This is a year of new opportunities and challenges. We are going to create new industrial parks. Sabah must grow its export economy,” it’s Minister Datuk Phoong Jin Zhe said.
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“We increased the budget allocation from RM10 million to RM50 million to provide machines, free. “Only the Sabah Government gives free machines to manufacturers because we are so eager to help them build our industries”. “We also provide some grants. Not soft loan, but grant, to new start-ups”.
“We also increased our budget to bring our manufacturers to international expos that managed to garner some RM50 million sales last year”. “We want to help our local manufacturers to sell their products in the export markets”. “Our ‘keropok’ is exported to Australia and New Zealand,” Phoong said.
He was speaking at the CNY Reception hosted by the Small and Medium Enterprises Association (Samenta) Sabah branch and Sabah Entrepreneurs Transformation (SET), recently.
Attending the event were Assistant Finance Minister Tan Lee Fatt, Chief Minister Political Secretary Datuk Roland Chia, Sabah Credit Corporation CEO Datuk Datuk George Taitim Tulas, and Shareda president Datuk Sr. Chua Soon Ping.
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Phoong called on businesses to adapt to new ways of doing business, as many are downsizing their administrative staff or cutting manpower in a year full of challenges, as well as new opportunities to expand their export market foothold in the Asean and international marketplace.
He claimed to be able to detect letters sent to his Ministry drafted by AI. “It is okay, as long as what you communicate is clear.”
“In Sabah we do not have a significant number of industries. Our industry GDP is only like 7.3 per cent. Last time, it was even lower than 7 per cent. We have set a target of industry GDP to be above 10 per cent,” Phoong said.
“In Penang, it is near to 40 to 50 per cent. In Selangor, and the whole of Malaysia, it is like 20 over per cent. Sabah is the lowest. We only have 7 per cent. We do not produce much and literally have to import many things.
“So, when the world’s geopolitical change happen it will bring a new wave of disruptions to world trade.
“We need to look at how to build our own supply chain in Sabah,” he said. “This is because we rely on imports. We do not export many manufactured goods. Without industry, we cannot prosper. Otherwise we cannot provide enough good high paying job opportunities to our young people, and we will continue to export manpower elsewhere.
“We need more factories. Kibing in KKIP has provided 2,000 jobs, bringing back Sabahans from Australia, Taiwan, West Malaysia and Sarawak and they got a job there.”
Phoong said last year, Sabah was the star performer in Malaysia: “Recently, with our commitment to bring in investments, my commitment to help local manufacturers to upscale, in 2023, our industrial GDP grew 4.4 per cent.
“That’s the highest among other states in Malaysia. We were the champion in 2023 in terms of growth in industrial GDP.
