Sepanggar port will face more challenges soon – Phoong

KOTA KINABALU (Aug 13): The Sepanggar Bay Container Port can expect busier days and face more challenges soon.

Industrial Development and Entrepreneurship Minister Datuk Phoong Jin Zhe said SK Nexilis is exporting 50 containers daily while another company, SBH Kibing Solar New Materials (M) Sdn Bhd, plans to upscale and export 100 containers per day.

“Indirectly, this will cause congestion and challenges to the port,” he told reporters at his ministry today.

He added that they are working towards addressing this matter.

Phoong also said that Sabah will not follow in Sarawak’s footsteps to reinstate the Cabotage Policy.

“We will continue to liberalise and hope more international ship liners will come to Sabah, and help build up our shipping industry,” he said.

“We have ships from Hong Kong, from Xiamen, from Singapore. The Xiamen just left KK (Kota Kinabalu). They can direct call here, bring goods out,” he said.

Phoong also said that previously Sabah was not popular amongst shippers as there weren’t many goods exported.

“We must have strong industry and more boxes of containers to be shipped out,” he reminded.

On attracting investors, Phoong said that virtually every country created incentives to attract investors.

He said that he found it bizarre that this was questioned by the opposition party.

“This is common practice. Like SK Nexilis which gets tax incentives from MIDA (Malaysian Investment Development Authority). It isn’t something extraordinary. MIDA provides a lot of incentives to attract giant companies like Microsoft for FDI (foreign direct investment) to come in,” he said.

As for SK Nexilis, the minister reminded that this is a major company and a reliable investor.

“It is not like we are giving to one dollar company,” he said.

In MIDA, there is pioneer status company, invest in high tech and especially country aspire to be developing green company, and this is the largest copper company. It is an investment strategy not just from the Sabah government.

“I feel bizzare that people question why no factory in Sabah and the young Sabahans leaving Sabah. Now there is factory but they criticised again,” he lamented.

He added that Kibing and SK Nexilis have created more than 2,000 jobs offering higher pay and skill.