Invest in hotels in Sabah — MPC
KOTA KINABALU: Investors are encouraged to venture into the tourism sector in Sabah, especially the hotel industry.
Malaysia Productivity Corporation (MPC) board member Datuk Ag Buhtamam Ag Mahmud said Sabah has seen huge arrivals of Chinese and Korean tourists over the past few years.
“We are short of some 6,000 over rooms in the State. Hence, anyone interested to venture into the tourism sector should come and invest in hotels here,” he said, when officiating at the Malaysia Productivity Blueprint (MPB) seminar for manufacturing sector here yesterday.
The MPB, Buhtamam said, was launched by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak on May 8 last year with the aim of raising the country's productivity to new heights.
To execute the implementation of 42 initiatives, identified in sectoral level as outlined in MPB, he said, nine productivity nexus have been established, in which three were sub-sectors under manufacturing, namely, electrical and electronics (E&E), chemical, machinery and equipment (M&E).
He said, these productivity nexus, led by productivity nexus champions, would drive the implementation of these initiatives in close partnership with the government agencies.
The target outcomes of the nexus are to strengthen collaborative partnership between industries, governments and universities, he said.
“It is our hope that such triple helix concept will accelerate the implementation of the initiatives and, holistically, further increase productivity at enterprises, sectoral and national level,” he said.
Buhtamam explained that the seminar yesterday was a joint effort to integrate the three nexus to share common understanding on the importance of MPB, and their combined 14 sector-specific initiatives implementation that would collectively contribute to the targeted manufacturing sector productivity growth of 2.6 percent annually or RM112,100 by 2020.
In 2017, he said, these three sub-sectors, namely E&E, chemical and M&E, contributed to 37.6 percent and 28 percent of manufacturing sector's added value and employment respectively.
As for labour productivity, he said, the manufacturing sector increased by 4.2 percent to RM110,839 from RM106,413 in 2016.
He added that the chemical sub-sector recorded the highest productivity level of RM254,858, an increase of 2.6 percent, followed by E&E at RM140,010 (5.6 percent) and M&E at RM75,825 (4.7 percent).
Buhtamam said, industry associations in Malaysia were already playing a key role in transforming the industry, but they needed to be further empowered to produce visible results.
“Through productivity nexus, industry associations have collective power as they, undeniably, possess strong connections and network with sector players.
“It will create a shared collective vision of overall development of productivity enhancement, particularly best practices that eventually benefit many more enterprises,” he said.