From left: IDS CEO Anthony Kiob (moderator for second session), Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Dr Joachim Gunsalam, NK Foo and Dr Bonaventure Boniface (third speaker).
KOTA KINABALU: SME Association of Sabah (SME Sabah) President Foo Ngee Kee suggested a few approaches to sustainable solutions to overcome the four challenges that can hamper Sabah’s industrialisation.
The solutions are through increase in investments (foreign and local) and import substitutions for vegetables (RM242 million) and maize (RM228 million).
Through the investments, supply chain opportunities will be created for business development by Small & Medium Enterprises (SME), and this in turn will create jobs for youth and others.
Almost all the RM228 million worth of maize were imported from Argentina for animal feeds. The top six types of imported vegetables amounted to RM203 million, with the top three being potatoes RM90 million, onions and shallots RM38 million, garlic RM28 million.
Foo was one of the four invited speakers for a webinar. He identified the key challenges to Sabah’s industrialisation as low population, poor logistic connectivity, lacking in industrial technology and low skills workforce.
Foo said the Sabah Government has to work closely with the Federal Government on getting a fair share of the Foreign Direct Investment (FDIs) and High-value digital Global Business Services (GBS) brought in by Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) to operate in Malaysia’s Multimedia Super Corridor.
The GBS market size in Malaysia is expected to grow from US$1.3 billion in 2019 to US$1.5 billion by end 2024.
KKIP Aerospace Academy (AA) is working towards an early certification which had been delayed by the pandemic. Youth who graduated from the AA will be skilled workers and command higher wages.
GBS digital jobs and the aerospace jobs will help greatly to increase the average wages for workers in Sabah. With these higher wage jobs available, this will not only stop the migration, but will attract youth to return to work in Sabah.
The webinar titled “The State’s Industrialisation: A Solution to Migration and Youth Unemployment in Sabah” was organised by the Institute for Development Studies (IDS) Sabah in partnership with Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung of Germany on May 20.