Uggah (right) and Masing shake hands after the handover of duty. — Photo by Kong Jun Liung
KUCHING: Sarawak targets to increase its planted oil palm areas to two million hectares by 2020, said Deputy Chief Minister and Modernisation of Agriculture and Rural Economy Minister Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah Embas.
To meet this objective, he said a comprehensive study will be undertaken to come up with an oil palm industry masterplan.
“The oil palm industry is one of the fastest growing economic sectors in Sarawak. In the last five years, the industry has grown by a whopping 40 per cent in terms of planted hectarage.
“The planted hectarage was increased from one million hectares by end of 2010 to 1.4 million hectares by end of last year. The oil palm industry accounts for about nine per cent of Sarawak’s total export, contributing more than RM400 million per year in direct revenue (from sales tax) to the state government.”
He revealed this during the handing-over of duties to him by former Land Development Minister Tan Sri Datuk Amar Dr James Masing at Bangunan Baitul Makmur in Petra Jaya yesterday.
Uggah pointed out that the masterplan would chart the future direction of the industry while determining the appropriate extent of areas to be planted in the future.
“The masterplan is also to determine the appropriate numbers of mills, refineries and ancillary facilities that is sufficient to support the industry, to exploit the potential for downstream processing activities in the future and to determine the infrastructural needs of the industry.” He said the ministry would also introduce a masterplan for the rubber industry, which presently has about 175,000 hectares planted with the crop across the state.
Noting that Malaysia recorded an import volume of 400,000 tonnes of latex, he said there was a need for Sarawak to look at the overall plan to ensure that its rubber industry could play an important role in the country.
“Sarawak is a new area with still a large stretch of land to be developed. What we need is a masterplan to see that this rubber industry will then be strategically developed with the ultimate objective of seeing downstream activities taking place in Sarawak so that we have a complete supply chain from the main source right down to the downstream activities.” Uggah said Sarawak’s rubber hectarage was presently 25 per cent of the national hectarage.
“Sarawak is a new frontier, this is one of the potential areas for expansion. Tan Sri (Masing) has charted the direction by 2020 we should be planting about two million hectares.
“In the masterplan, we will look at the sustainability because that is the main issue by NGOs. They have thrown us a lot of accusations of destroying the biodiversity and so forth. But I think the state has complied very closely with the requirement needed by the country.”
He said one of the requirements by the Malaysian government “is to keep our forest coverage at minimum of 50 per cent.” At present, he said Malaysia had around 55 per cent of its land covered with forests, with Sarawak as one of the main contributors.
“This commitment was made by former prime minister in Rio (de Janeiro) in 1992. I also understand most of the palm oil industry including the mills are also in compliance with the standard set.”