KOTA KINABALU: Majlis Amanah Rakyat (MARA) expects to launch 18 cluster factories between December and early next year, one of which will be used for housing products of Bumiputera entrepreneurs from Sabah and Sarawak.
MARA Sabah director Zulkarnain Zakaria said they were planning to use the facility as a one-stop centre for products from the two states before distributing to operators in Peninsular Malaysia.
“Our plan is to focus the cluster factories on food and beverage and one of them will be used for products from here,” he said, without revealing the exact location of the said factory.
Speaking at the MARA networking dinner with Sabah entrepreneurs here on Tuesday, Zulkarnain said the one stop-centre approach was in tandem with MARA’s effort to create strong collaborations and networking between the entrepreneurs from the three regions of Sabah, Sarawak and Peninsular Malaysia.
The agency, he added, wanted to help Bumiputera entrepreneurs in Sabah to progress rapidly by tapping the vast potential made available by the state’s vibrant economic development, to expand their businesses not just locally but in Peninsular Malaysia and overseas.
“We want friends in Sabah to have business partners in the middle east and have their products marketed, for example, at Dubai Airport. We don’t want to see them becoming a mere observer of the economic development taking place around them but to participate actively as successful entrepreneurs,” he said.
He informed that several programmes had been lined up to help groom entrepreneurs in Sabah, such as the Image Improvement and Public Speaking Technique workshops to be held in December.
A subsidized business mission to Vietnam will also be organized by MARA end next month and will be open to 30 entrepreneurs from Sabah on a first come first serve basis.
Earlier in his speech, Zulkarnain reported that 1,224 participants had benefited from 35 entrepreneurship development programmes organized by MARA so far this year, where an allocation of RM1.35 million was provided by the government to the agency.