Sabah timber policy for review?

Kota Kinabalu: Industry players are waiting to see whether the new GRS Sabah Government will continue with the log export ban imposed by the previous State Government in reported attempt to develop downstream value-added activities to generate employment from the manufacturing of furniture and other wood-based products.

After more than 50 years and having gone through 11 Malaysia Five Year Development Plans, downstream activities are still low. This is one of the major factors that has caused Sabah to be far behind in terms of development and economic growth.

They said it would be interesting to note whether the new State Government will continue to incentivise and focus on environmental protection (sans the illegal loggings), human capital development and to provide high quality infrastructure as well as basic amenities in order to support and expand developing sectors to be more competitive and sustainable as well as to meet the 30 per cent contribution to Sabah’s GDP target from  industrialisation set by the previous State Government.

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