KUCHING, Jan 24 — Sarawak Chief Minister Datuk Patinggi Abang Johari Openg today said that the state’s industrialisation policy has yielded good results as more investors are coming in to invest.
He said, apart from the policy, the state has abundant natural resources, renewable energy and a big land mass.
“Sarawak needs more Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and Domestic Direct Investment (DDI) to propel its economic growth and that industrialisation is one of the way to move forward,” he said at the launch of Iljin Materials Malaysia Sdn Bhd, a Korea high-tech company, at Sama Jaya High Tech Park here.
The chief minister said the park, to-date, has generated enormous socio-economic benefits for Sarawak, pointing out that last year, the total export from the park reached RM4.6 billion compared to RM3.2 billion or 43 per cent growth year on year.
“Besides that, 11,800 job opportunities are being created in the park where 98.9 per cent are locals, and that almost 10 per cent of them are engineers,” he said.
Abang Johari said he is glad that multinational corporations (MNCs) operating at the park are committed to recruit local Sarawakians.
He noted the cumulative investments by these companies have exceeded RM12 billion and the annual salaries paid to the workforce alone stood at RM460 million in 2018.
“This has created many multiplier effects to our local economy such as demand for food, housing, transportation, retail and entertainment,” he said.
Iljin Materials is investing RM400 million under phase one for the manufacturing of elecfoil and production will commence in first quarter of this year.
Elecfoil is a very thin copper foil needed for PCB (printed circuit board) production and used in smartphones such as Samsung and electric vehicles such as BMW, GM, Jaguar, Volkswagen, Benz and Porsche.
