By : OXFORD BUSINESS GROUP IT HAS been an eventful year for Sabah, characterised by growing streams of investment flowing in to a state, enhanced mercantile cooperation, softened trade relations as well as several poignant offshore oil discoveries, together with a single voiced in Nov by a national oil corporation, Petronas.
Discovering oil in waters off Sabah's west coast, 100 km from Kota Kinabalu, Petronas voiced that it approaching in-place reserves of more than 227m barrels of oil equivalent (boe). This is noticed as a harbinger for a subsequent expansion courtesy in Sabah, with oil as well as gas taking a place of oil palm as well as timber as a state's vital trade commodities.
One spin-off from offshore discoveries earlier like a a single in Nov has been calls to examination a 5% bound oil royalty a state currently receives from a sovereign government.
Petronas has additionally been move with several upstream as well as downstream oil as well as gas projects, together with a Sabah Oil Gas Terminal (SOGT), a Sabah Ammonia as well as Urea Project (Samur) as well as a Sabah-Sarawak gas tube (SSGP). Together, these have been approaching to ac! celerate value-added capabilities in a sector.
SOGT's significance as a depot for many of Sabah's offshore oil as well as gas was highlighted by an announcement that a new offshore gas field with tube links to SOGT is being developed. The Kebabangan field will be linked around tube to SOGT, underneath construction at Kimanis.
Meanwhile, pipes have been still being laid for a SSGP. When completed, a line will couple Sabah as well as Sarawak's gas sectors, using 500 km to a liquefied healthy gas (LNG) plant run by Petronas at Bintulu, Sarawak.
Elsewhere, an announcement in Jan buoyed investor confidence in a Palm Oil Industrial Cluster (POIC) in Lahad Datu. News a cluster had secured a long-term supply of wet empty fruit bunches was seen as an important step towards making Sabah a centre of Malaysia's oil palm biomass industry.
The Lahad Datu area additionally drew public courtesy when, in February, a chief minister voiced skeleton to build a argumentative coal-fired plant there had been scrapped.
Meanwhile, a supervision voiced a Sabah Development Corridor (SDC) had entered its second phase in 2011. The Chief Minister voiced cumulative programmed investment in a SDC had reached RM57bn ($ 17.9bn) roughly 4 times a aim worth set in 2010. During this phase, that will run until 2015, a SDC will be pursuing an desirous list of expansion projects to generate employment as well as income for Sabahans as well as to assistance jump-start sustainable mercantile growth.
Sustainable expansion is additionally at a back of efforts to safety a state's rich biodiversity a categorical asset attracting tourists to Sabah. With this in mind, a state supervision has begun to extent a number of visitors to primitive healthy areas s! uch as S emporna, that was found this year to be biologically a richest sea area in a world.
Sabah's tourism zone is nonetheless approaching to outstrip its stream 10% share of a state's GDP within a subsequent five years. In 2011, a Ministry of Tourism, Culture as well as Environment was targeting traveller arrivals of 2.63m as well as tourism profits of RM4.704bn ($ 1.48bn). This looks to be upon track, with statistics from Sabah's tourism board showing sum arrivals of scarcely 2.1m from Jan by September.
There was some murky headlines in 2011, mainly in a travel sector. The much-anticipated Firefly services to Kuala Lumpur, as well as a MAS approach moody from Sandakan to Kuala Lumpur were both cancelled. This caused worry both for tourism officials as well as those concerned with national integration.
Furthermore, calls for liberalisation of a sovereign cabotage policy underneath that all products alien in to a state have been authorised to be transported usually by internal shipping companies have nonetheless to strech a final conclusion. Many Sabahans feel a policy hits a state's businesses as well as consumers hard, with customers in Sabah mostly paying most aloft prices for alien products than fellow Malaysians upon a peninsula. On a brighter note, programmes intended to spur industrial expansion by leveraging investments in a state's production zone were seen to be temperament fruit.
Meanwhile, Sabah one after another to position itself as a categorical contender in apropos a gateway for informal investments, especially in a Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines-East ASEAN Growth Area (BIMP-EAGA).
Helping in a effort to capture such unfamiliar investment, a Kota Kinabalu Industrial Park (KKIP) one after another to be a valuable negotiate! chip, w ith management team touting a park's connectivity to BIMP-EAGA's 60m people as well as beyond to informal as well as global markets. KKIP is already rising as a informal placement heart for logistics companies, automobile makers, biotech firms as well as halal-oriented outfits.
While a lot of work still remains to be done upon issues such as raising a state's educational standards, bridging urban-rural technological as well as income divides as well as boosting value-added capabilities for a state's healthy resources, Sabah appears to be in fighting form as 2012 arrive.
- Sabahkini
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