Yahya Says Big Export Potential For Sabah's Agriculture Produce

KOTA KINABALU, March 8 (Bernama) -- The Deputy Chief Minister of Sabah, Datuk Seri Yahya Hussin, today said he hoped to see Sabah produce more of its agricultural produce as well as export them to a wider market worldwide.

Yahya, who is also Sabah's Minister of Agriculture and Food Industry, said the potential was high to increase production as there was vast space of abandoned and undeveloped land available in the state.

He said this after visiting the Federal Agricultural Marketing Authority (FAMA)'s complex here Tuesday.

"The products are there in other (neighbouring) countries but they are not enough, such as the Pamelo fruit from Sabah which is exported to Brunei and Singapore apart from the peninsula. According to the briefing (from FAMA) our local products are still not able to meet the demand from overseas and exports are not moving smoothly due to the short supply of products like ginger and cinnamon among others.

"We have fertile land belonging to individuals and companies but no work has been done on these land yet, we therefore need to fill them up," he told reporters.

The minister was earlier briefed by former Sabah state director of FAMA, Ibrahim Mahmood.

He later toured the operations centre of FAMA, accompanied by Director General of FAMA Datuk Mohamed Shariff Abdul Aziz.

Yahya said the issue of shortage of food faced by several countries should be taken as a lesson and that Sabah should not wait till a food crisis crops up to start working on its land.

He called on the relevant departments and farmers to increase their efforts towards increasing agriculture produce.

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