KUCHING: The Ministry of Entrepreneur Development and Cooperatives (Medac) is committed to producing technopreneurs to help the country address issues of unemployment and food security.
Minister Datuk Seri Dr Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar said his ministry had begun working with the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industries (Mafi) to encourage participation in agriculture, particularly among the cooperatives.
“This is to ensure we can strengthen the country’s food security apart from reducing our reliance on imported agri-based products amounting to about RM18 billion a year,” he said during his visit to the Angkatan Koperasi Kebangsaan Malaysia Berhad (Angkasa) Sarawak office and BA100 outlet at Jalan Matang on Sunday (Dec 27).
The minister added the recent meat cartel issue involving senior government officers, believed to be receiving bribes in passing non-certified meat as halal products, should serve as an eye opener on the need for Malaysians to be more involved in food production.
“If we produce our own meat, I believe the halal or haram case will not emerge again. Not to say that we have to ban imported food products as we still have a demand for vegetables grown in cold climate.
“However, we need to reduce the reliance on imported products which needed strict supervision like meat. Thus, we want more youth and unemployed graduates become agropreneurs,” he added, while sharing that the country’s food security level for rice stood at 65 percent in the previous years.
Wan Junaidi added that 89 percent of the total 14,625 cooperatives nationwide were in the service sector while about 1.1 percent were in the agriculture sector.
“There is a lot of sectors that the cooperatives have yet to delve into. With that, I hope many cooperatives will start to venture into production sector such as manufacturing, construction and agriculture,” he said.
The ministry also applauded Angkasa for setting up Project BA100, an integrated programme that took off earlier this year, to help owners of grocery stores cushion the impact of Covid-19.
The BA100, supported by Medac, is an e-commerce business programme that gathers purchases of basic goods in bulk from cooperative-owned grocery stores by offering daily necessities at more economical prices than the regular market. All transactions are done via an app simply known as Jimat Biz.
Also present were Angkatan Koperasi Kebangsaan Malaysia Berhad (Angkasa) Sarawak chairman Wan Azizan Wan Zainal Abidin and Malaysian Cooperatives Commission (MCC) Sarawak director Basuini Ali.
