SABAH STANDS OUT!

IT HAS been a hectic 10 days in Sabah, starting with a whirlwind visit of Prime Minister Najib Razak who was followed by his deputy Muhyiddin Yassin and former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed. Throughout this short period, a consensus is reached: Rich Sabah is poised to be Malaysia’s richest. And the credit goes to Chief Minister Musa Aman.

Najib has made it clear that he will continue to work with Musa to develop Sabah. Muhyddin says that investors are attracted to Sabah because of Musa’s business friendly policies. And during a public lecture at the Universiti Malaysia Sabah on May 1, Mahathir told his audience that Sabah will soon become Malaysia’s richest as it develops its oil and gas industries.

Sabahans showed their wealth at the week-long Malaysia’s unit trust fair which was held in Kota Kinabalu for the first time from April 20 to 28. It was launched 13 years ago by Permodalan Nasional Berhad, the country’s investment company. Sabahans in fact need little education on investment. About 1.08m of them, roughly a third of the state’s population, have invested 12 billion ringgit ($4 billion) in PNB’s trust funds. This makes them the fifth largest group of investors in the country.

Najib was moved to tell PNB to invest in Sabah’s tourism, agro and marine-industries which his government has earmarked under his massive 1.4-trillion ringgit economic transformation programme to turn Malaysia into a developed country by 2020.

And by the time Muhyiddin came to close the fair, a record of almost 270,000 people have visited it – all eager to find out what they can do with their money sitting in the bank.

Foreign investors are flocking to Sabah as they have confidence in Musa’s administration, according to Muhyddin. In fact Sabah had the third largest foreign direct investments last year at 13.7 billion ringgit.

Recently, Sabah scored a coup with a 2-billion ringgit joint-venture with America’s Darden Restaurants to build the world’s biggest lobster farm off Semporna on the southeastern Sabah coast. Insight Sabah can confirm that the project was headed for Singapore if not for Musa Aman. Bill Herzig, Darden's senior vice-president, says his company is attracted by the Sabah government policy that encourages economic growth. Sabah’s marine environment is also well suited to lobster farming.

Mahathir notes that Sabah is well poised for a booming oil and gas industry with spin-offs from the Sabah Oil and Gas Terminal in Kimanis and the 4.7-billion ringgit Sabah ammonia and urea project (samur) in Sipitang which is turning into an oil and gas industrial park.

The first 45-billion ringgit worth of projects is taking off. They include a 500-km (313-mile) undersea pipeline from Kimanis to Bintulu that costs 5.5 billion ringgit, a 1-billion ringgit 300-megawatt gas-fired power plant and a 1-billion regasification terminal in Lahad Datu on the east coast. (Insight Sabah)