Sabah co-op told to produce world-brand products

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KOTA KINABALU: State-owned Village Development Cooperative (VDC) has been told to aim at producing world-brand products that can penetrate the international market.

To achieve this, Deputy Sabah Chief Minister Datuk Yahya Hussin said, the cooperative should focus on adding value to its products which at the same time would enable it to maximise returns.

“What I see is that most products by VDC are still local and there is room for improvement,” he said during the cooperative’s annual dinner here last night.

Yahya, who is State Agriculture and Food Industry Minister, also told the cooperative to participate in high-impact and export-oriented agriculture projects as part of its efforts to enhance performance.

Such projects could include big-scale goat breeding and mushroom cultivation that had the potential to be the state’s export commodities, he said.

Projects such as these could be expanded because the demand was high and it could increase the income of contract farmers, he added.

Yahya said VDC, as an implementation agent, played an important role in supporting the state’s efforts to achieve the goal of agriculture development.

He said the cooperative’s peformance so far was very encouraging despite facing several problems that were inherited from the previous management.

“In a short time, VDC has shown a good performance and I believe this would not have been achieved without a team of committed officers and staff working towards enhancing the organisation’s performance,” he said. — Bernama