N Kalimantan-Sabah trade zone plan
Published on: Sunday, April 09, 2017
Kota Kinabalu: Discussions are underway to set up a border trade zone between Simanggaris in North Kalimantan and Serudong in Sabah.The proposed border trade centre is to be jointly developed by both Sabah and North Kalimantan, but driven by businesses with government support particularly on policies, infrastructures, to name a few.Once fully established, it is expected to be a buzzing economic centre that will mutually stimulate growth of businesses, particularly Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and the local economy of Sabah and North Kalimantan in general.
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Two leading parties, Kamar Dagang dan Industri Indonesia (Kadin) and Society Empowerment and Economic Development Sabah (Seeds), have been pushing the agenda to their respective governments.As of now, the Indonesians have made some progress by constructing road access to Simanggaris from the administrative centre of Malinau. "There's great economic potential when we have a trade zone established at the border between North Kalimantan and Sabah. On our side, we have built a sealed road all the way from Malinau to Simanggaris," said Kilit Laing, Chairman of Kadin of North Kalimantan.What's needed to get the proposed trade zone closer to realisation is for the Sabah side to connect Serudong to Simanggaris. It was learned that the distance was only about 10km.
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Kilit said the proposed trade zone is justified by the fact that there has already been a mutual interest among consumers from both territories in some basic daily goods and items."We know for a fact that Indonesians love Malaysian goods and vice versa.
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We can build on this by establishing a border trade centre," he said.He also said that it would help address smuggling activities which do not contribute to the respective governments' coffers in duties and taxes.He assured that his government is committed to the developing the idea and is ready to provide huge acreage of land for that purpose. He estimated some millions of ringgit in trade transactions can possibly be generated annually when the zone if fully developed.Meanwhile, Seeds Chairman Datuk Badil Zaman Rahman said the proposed border trade zone idea and its huge potentials had been bounced off to the State Economic Planning Unit (EPU)."We're still talking. So far there has not been any decision made yet," he said.Last week, Seeds was entrusted to take the lead in pursuing the Sabah-North Kalimantan trade relationship agenda during a roundtable discussion that was participated by 25 parties comprising Sabah business chambers, the government agencies and the BIMP-EAGA Business Council.The non-profit organisation whose members are made up by individuals from diverse professional and cultural backgrounds, mostly academicians, and all without any conflict of interest, is facilitating the process with the aim of unlocking the entire of Kalimantan for Sabah's SMEs to have space to grow and become more competitive."Simanggaris is only about three hours from the strategic town of Malinau. From there, we will have a gateway to the wider Kalimantan market of about 12 million people," he said.He reiterated the need for Sabah's businesses to organise themselves in one common platform to effectively interface with their Indonesian business communities which are well structured under Kadin and no others."We want to talk business with them as one unit and not fragmented. Or else they wouldn't know who they should be rightly talking to. So we will work closely with Kadin in North Kalimantan and complement the BIMP-EAGA and SOSEK Malindo initiatives. We will also strengthen whatever bilateral or regional forum from a business perspective such as AFTA and the Asean community," he said. Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
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