By Adrian Lim
KUCHING, Feb 29: Santubong MP Datuk Seri Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar supported the state government’s initiative to build a furniture city for the development of the timber industry in Sarawak.
He opined that the development of furniture city in Sarawak will enable industry players to manufacture more value added products while conserving natural forests without the need to cut down more trees.
“With the development of a furniture city, we will cut less trees, thus conservation, while producing high value products by eight times.
“The end of the spectrum, we will reduce raw or semi-finished products but export only finished products at the value eighty times more.
“We will be able to increase revenue earning for the state from timber concessionaires, logging companies, transport companies and in fact create thousands of jobs in furniture making, manufacturing, marketing, retail trading and logistic,” he said in a statement today.
Wan Junaidi believed that there were huge potential for furniture manufacturing in the state.
He shared that when he was the natural resources and environment minister, he was looking at developing Sarawak as the second phase of the furniture city development.
He noted the people from his then ministry has the skill, knowledge and technology in timber and bamboo.
“I was looking at the planted 244,000 of acacia trees in Sarawak as the source of raw material for which Forest Research Institute Malaysia (FRIM) has the technology to increase the value by five times.
“My officers from the ministry was having an in-depth discussion with Pahang and the ministry of economic affairs.
“Pahang was then ready to back us up with 2,000 acres of land at strategic location along the Karak Highway and the ministry of economic affairs was prepared to allocate fund to assist the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and small and medium industries (SMIs) related to the timber industrial city which we were creating,” he disclosed.
At the moment, Wan Junaidi noted there were nearly RM12 billion worth of furniture business in Peninsular Malaysia that were being monopolised by those in Johor.
Meanwhile, Wan Junaidi revealed that he has created a paper on the furniture city in Sarawak in 2017.
The whole idea, he explained, revolved around four objectives namely conserving the forest, providing added value to timber products for export, increasing revenue earning and creating jobs to provide employment.
He also pointed out that one of the core objectives was to propagate the participation of Malays and Bumiputera in the timber industry which was dominated by one segment of the community.
Unfortunately, he observed that the development of furniture city in Sarawak was delayed due to strong political objection owing to the possibility of strong competition by furniture makers in Johor with 90 per cent production in Malaysia.
Obviously, he explained that the objection was only a perception and not real.
“From our casual study, most of the furniture makers in Johor are making products based on foreign patented designs and they were producing based on orders.
“The one that I had planned was an A to Z on our own and back up by research, designs, productions and marketing strategy of our own,” he said.
Nonetheless, he added that the idea of developing a furniture city in Sarawak was dismantled following the defeat of the Barisan Nasional (BN) government in the last general election.— DayakDaily
