Yong Teck Lee
KOTA KINABALU: Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP) president Datuk Yong Teck Lee said the Sabah government should go beyond producing cooking oil to also consider producing bio-diesel.
“This is as part of the wider strengthening of Sabah’s palm oil industry which is now a major contributor to the Sabah economy and a major source of state revenues,” he said.
In view of the federal government finally going ahead with the use of B20 bio-diesel (20% palm oil: 80% petroleum diesel) for motor vehicles next year, Yong said the Sabah government should now look into the viability of a bio-diesel plant to be set up in Sabah.
He added bio-diesel fuel consumption would help Sabah reduce its over dependence on imported diesel and also support the local palm oil industry.
In the same way, Yong pointed out the production of cooking oil in Sabah would benefit Sabah by way of import substitution, value adding to the state’s raw material (palm oil), jobs creation and stimulus to the economy.
“Locally produced cooking oil will also help to bring down prices of this basic necessity and, therefore, reduce the need for government subsidies for cooking oil,” he said.
Yong said, further, these cooking oil, if produced at Sandakan and Lahad Datu, can be easily marketed to the vast BIMP-EAGA market in both the Southern Philippines and Kalimantan.
The POICs (Palm Oil Industrial Clusters) at Sandakan and Lahad Datu are ideal locations for the both a bio-diesel plant and the proposed manufacturing plants to produce cooking oil.
Yong said locating the cooking oil plants at the existing POICs, which are already well developed, would mean that the government does not need to spend on infrastructure or other facilities to support the new cooking oil plants.