DEPUTY Chief Minister cum State Agriculture and Fisheries Minister Datuk Seri Dr Jeffrey Kitingan is hopeful many Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63) issues will be resolved under the new federal administration.
“We met the new Prime Minister (Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim) recently and we asked whether they will continue with the Cabinet Committee on MA63 (set up by the previous government).
His (Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s) response was ‘why is there a need for a Cabinet Committee, why don’t we just implement it?’
“I said, are you sure? He said ‘yes’. We are happy as that response means that we will focus on implementation.
“We have to sit down on how to get the 40 per cent (Sabah’s constitutional revenue entitlement share). The first is to confirm what is meant by net revenue. Once that is decided, then we should focus on what should be included in the income derived by the Federal Government from Sabah,” he said.
“Then we need to work out what amount is Sabah’s 40 per cent. It’s not too difficult. I hope it will happen, and it will happen soon. We are not taking any money from anybody. It is our money that they collect and they just return part of it. That’s all. Very simple.”
Dr Jeffrey said this after representing the Chief Minister in launching the Sabah Government’s new set of Strategic Plan of Actions (SPA) 2021-2030 to address emerging challenges and take advantage of potential opportunities to enhance conservation and management of the Heart of Borneo (HoB) landscape at the Sabah International Convention Centre (SICC) to further energise the conservation of the HoB.
