Good infrastructural support can draw investors — Deputy director

KOTA KINABALU: Sabah needs good and adequate infrastructural support to attract more   foreign investors to the state, says Yayasan Sabah deputy director Datuk Dr Johan Ariffin A Samad.

“In order to attract investors, Sabah needs to have certain things in place or guarantee, such as enough electricity, water, land and ports for export.

“Without this, investors would not have any confidence to come (to invest in the state).

“We need to balance construction development between urban and rural areas,” he told Bernama here.

Citing an example, Johan Ariffin said there was an urgent need to improve the present single-lane road between Kimanis and Kota Kinabalu, especially with the setting up of the Sabah Oil and Gas Terminal (SOGT) at Kimanis.

“This is a major town road which crosses to Brunei and Sarawak and if you live in Kota Kinabalu and work in Kimanis, you either leave early in the morning or arrive late.

Arial view: SOGT Kimanis

“Priority should be given to this KK-Kimanis-Sipitang road because this is where all industries in oil and gas are being situated,” he said after attending the recent Roundtable Debate on Sabah’s Economic Transformation here.Johan Ariffin was one of the participants of an investor roundtable debate here last Wednesday hosted by the Sabah Economic Development and Investment Authority (Sedia), in partnership with International Investor, a UK-based business intelligence and publishing organisation.

Apart from the education and social agenda assigned to him by the Yayasan Sabah Group, he has been entrusted to spearhead new ventures in the oil and gas sector via Petrosab, to complement the government’s industrialisation efforts.

“We see a lot of revenue derived from oil and gas and palm oil, so we have to go down further downstream industries, not just as a transit point or exporter.

“We need to create (more) Small Medium Industries (SMIs) which are the basis of our economy and which also create more economic activities as well as job opportunities,” he said.

He added Sabah must also look into creating a more organised industry, particularly supply chain supporting industries like the tooling industry.

“We can build a nice factory that can produce things but we have to import things from the Klang Valley,” he said.



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