Kuching: The Rural and Regional Development Ministry will hold discussions with the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs on the marketing of rural produce in hypermarkets, its Deputy Minister Datuk Dr Tiki Lafe said Thursday.He said there were many aspects to be negotiated between the two ministries to ensure that the products were not only marketed in local hypermarkets but overseas as well.
Detailed discussions were needed so that there were no overlapping roles by the two ministries, he told reporters after closing a financial workshop for rural entrepreneurs, here.
He was commenting on a call by the Prime Minister for high quality rural produce to be marketed in the network of supermarkets and hypermarkets in the country.
"Among the issues are who will be responsible for middlemen, marketing, quality, packaging and others before we can introduce the products on a wide scale," he said.
On other developments, Tiki said many factors caused rural development projects in Sabah and Sarawak to proceed slowly though approved by the Federal Government.
"One of them was the lack of infrastructure which made movement and bringing of building supplies for projects in a rural areas difficult," he said.
Others included weather, late receipt of allocations and the complexities of the project itself, he said.
The issue of delays of projects in Sabah and Sarawak was brought up by Information Minister Datuk Seri Abdul Kadir Sheikh Fadzir at a National Information Meeting here recently.
Tiki, who is also chairman of the monitoring committee for rural projects in Sabah and Sarawak, was however confident the problems would be overcome by next year.
He said the performance of projects in Sarawak until last November was quite satisfactory with 67 per cent of projects completed while for Sabah it was 45 per cent. - Bernama
