SARAWAK must invite global companies to set up their offices in the state and invest in projects here, said Chief Minister Datuk Amar Abang Johari Tun Openg.
He said the government would make sure that the state’s environment is “conducive for both domestic investors and global companies as well as local and foreign talent.”
“With our small population scattered over a huge landmass, Sarawak cannot be a place for cheap labour. Our labour is cheap only because high-paying jobs are insufficient.
“It is therefore important that our strategy to grow Sarawak at a faster rate must be to encourage investments in high-tech ventures where talent is the major driving force,” he said in his winding-up speech yesterday.
Abang Johari believed that Sarawakians are “among the cleverest and more intelligent people in the world”, which is why the state must create good jobs for Sarawakians who could be retained in their own state and build the country together.
“If we do not do that, we will be hollowing-out our professional people and be left only with the very old who stay behind to guard their houses and their other assets while our economy remains stagnant.
“We must get our Sarawakian talents, in collaboration with global talents, to build the Sarawak economy and position ourselves strategically in the world,” he stressed.
Abang Johari said Sarawakians must constantly re-invent themselves in order to make themselves relevant in today’s world.
“It is the constant search for this relevancy to the constantly changing world that creates the new opportunities for all of us in Sarawak, young Sarawakians as well as old Sarawakians, of all races.”
He said the state must make its local economy more accessible for everyone so that “anyone who wants to make a good life for themselves will have a chance to do so here in Sarawak.”
“In opening up our economy, we are also exposing ourselves to the challenges that will come domestically as well as from overseas. In responding to these challenges, we cannot just close ourselves further in and protect our comfort zone.
“We must indeed search for new opportunities created by these new challenges. We cannot close our minds to new ideas. We have to open up. We have to look to the future,” he added.