KUCHING: The Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security (MAFS) and the Sarawak Ministry of Food Industry, Commodity and Regional Development (M-FICORD) are planning to form a development committee together.
According to MAFS Deputy Minister Chan Foong Hin, the said committee was important to show the federal government’s support and facilitate Sarawak’s vision to become the net food exporter by 2030.
“Sarawak is the largest state in Malaysia, hence, it should play an important role to safeguard the food security not only in Sarawak but also Peninsular and Sabah.
“It is not only about exporting to others overseas but it is to export to the states within Malaysia. However, this committee is still in a preliminary discussion as the M-FICORD still needs to bring the matter up to its Supply and Use Tables (SUT) first,” he said.
Chan said this during a press conference after he paid a courtesy visit on M-FICORD minister Datuk Seri Dr Stephen Rundi Utom at the DUN building here on Tuesday (Feb 21).
Meanwhile, Dr Rundi stated that with the establishment of the said committee, the federal and state government would be able to share information and their vision together.
“This is so that what we are doing is in tandem with what the Malaysia government is going for in terms of how to move the agro industry forward.
“There are various things that we are looking at. Food security and food safety are important to us so that we are able to reach our target to be a net food exporter by 2030,” he said.
In line with this, he pointed out that Sarawak had the potential to be a net food exporter due to the space that it has.
“But having a lot of space doesn’t mean a thing without the use of technology that could increase the production, quality, and so on.
“Furthermore, we also need to complete the value chain which has been missing over the years. We need to have the upstream and downstream process and only then we can talk about export,” he said.
Therefore, Dr Rundi concurred with Chan that being a net food exporter is not all about exporting overseas but exporting to within Malaysia.
“The demand here is high, so unless we can fulfil beyond (the demand here) then we can go beyond (to overseas).”
