‘Sarawak among top 4 investment destinations for past nine years’
KUCHING: Sarawak has been ranked among the top four investment destinations in Malaysia over the past nine years, said Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Amar Awang Tengah Ali Hasan.
The Minister of Industrial and Entrepreneur Development said the state had moved up to number two in 2015 and number three last year.
“This achievement is not by chance but the result of our strong leadership, good planning and implementation by the state government,” he said when representing Chief Minister Datuk Patinggi Abang Johari Tun Openg to launch the 4th Sarawak Business and Investment Summit at a leading hotel here yesterday.
Awang Tengah, who is also Second Minister for Urban Development and Natural Resources, said Sarawak offered competitively-priced land with flexible terms of payment as well as electricity and water tariffs apart from the tax incentives provided by the federal government.
He noted that total investments
This achievement is not by chance but the result of our strong leadership, good planning and implementation by the state government. Datuk Amar Awang Tengah Ali Hasan, Deputy Chief Minister
in the state had decreased to RM4.7 billion last year.
Despite that, Sarawak had received investment proposals totalling RM8.4 billion for the first nine months of the year, he pointed out.
“This does not include the proposed US$ 3 billion (over RM12 billion) steel project and US$ 2 billion (over RM8 billion) methanol project in Bintulu.
“These are encouraging signs and we are confident that more investors will come to Sarawak particularly for energy-intensive industries,” he said.
Awang Tengah said the existence of trigger industries in Samalaju such as aluminium, ferroalloys and polycrystalline silicon had well-positioned the state to develop industrial clusters for these industries.
He said the state was now targeting the value- added and downstream industries to utilise the raw materials from the existing trigger industries to develop its small and medium enterprise (SME) clusters.
Under the 11th Malaysia Plan, he said the state government had approved an allocation of RM20 billion on top of approved federal allocation of RM24.6 billion to implement various projects.
Among the projects are Pan Borneo Highway at a cost of RM16.5 billion, Murum hydroelectric dam ( RM4.1 billion), Baleh hydroelectric dam ( RM8 billion), transmission line - backbone ( RM2.7 billion), Samalaju Industrial Port ( RM1.8 billion) and Samalaju Industrial Park ( RM1 billion).
“The state government will continue to facilitate private investments. We acknowledge that the private sector has the necessary ingredients; namely capital, latest technology and management expertise as proven in the case of many developed economies,” added Awang Tengah.