SANDAKAN: Sabah Green Development (SGD) and China-based company, Living Great Fortune (LGF) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Monday to build 200 water villas at Sipadan Mangrove Resort, Semporna.
The water villa will be used for tourism to support the government’s initiative to attract more tourists to Sabah’s East Coast under the Sabah East Coast Tourism Belt which aims to increase the number of tourists to the state from 3.5 million (2017) to 10 million by 2023.
According to International Marketing Director of LGF, Ong Tat Kian, the water villas will be the pioneer project of such initiative, and the construction will start after three months, after the land is ready for construction.
“The villas will bring more tourists, especially from China, to come to Sabah’s East Coast. We will build more of such villas in other parts of the East Coast, but for Sandakan, probably not this year,” he said.
Ong also said that the villas are now open for investment to interested investors locally and from China. He said that investors will get to stay for a month at the villas for free, after they are completed. Thereafter, LGF will run the operation of the villas while 70 per cent of the profit will go to investors.
The MoU was signed and exchanged between Ong and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of SGD, John Nip, witnessed by Chief Minister Tan Sri Musa Aman.
The ceremony which was held at Four Points be Sheraton Hotel here was also attended by potential investors of the project and around 20 investors from Chengdu and Shenzhen who are in Sandakan to better understand the Sabah East Coast Tourism Belt (SECTB).