The natural rubber industry is still an integral part of the Malaysian economy, given that its contribution to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), export earnings and employment for a large number of smallholders is significant Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah stated.
He also said that being home to both the world’s largest rubber glove manufacturer and largest latex condom producer, Malaysia contributes a sizeable chunk to the global rubber products manufacturing and therefore requires a steady supply of natural rubber.
“In fact in order to support our rubber-based industry, we import 318,419 metric tonnes of latex concentrate from Thailand annually.
“Thus, this (revitalisation of natural rubber industry) will offer new opportunity for Sarawak to produce latex concentrate in order to reduce import of latex into Malaysia.
“The other product from the rubber industry is rubber wood, which can be used to produce wood-based products such as furniture, as well as building and interior decoration materials.
“This will be our prelude to attract private sector investments in rubber-based industry into Sarawak,” said Uggah, who is also Minister of Modernisation of Agriculture, Native Land and Regional Development.
However, it is recorded that the export value for rubber products in Sarawak had declined – from RM265.7 million in 2012 to only RM114.0 million in 2013.
On this, Uggah said it was due to the smallholding sector of rubber plantations, which dominated the local natural rubber industry, continuing to lag behind their peers in terms of productivity and quality of raw rubber produced.
As such, he announced that the state government would spearhead the development of the natural rubber industry via a proposal for the setting up of a full-fledged authority, which would ensure a dynamic and sustainable development of rubber within Sarawak, stating: “Sarawak is the last frontier for the rubber industry development in the country.”
Additionally, Uggah also said the ministry would conduct digital mapping on viable plots of land, including the Native Customary Rights (NCR) plots to be developed into large-scale rubber plantations.
On this note, Uggah disclosed that the ministry would propose for a leasing model as the solution to accelerate native land development.
“Based on the experience in the implementation of joint-venture model under the New NCR Land Development Concept introduced in 1995 and revised in 2015, we need to further improve the current model and also to provide alternative model to the NCR landowners.
“In this respect, my ministry has proposed a leasing model, which will be presented to the cabinet,” he said.
Currently, the total NCR land area approved for survey covers 1.2 million hectares.
“So far, we have surveyed 804,826 hectares, of which 643,017 hectares have been successfully gazetted as Native Communal Reserves under Section 6 of the State Land Code.
“Out of this gazetted land, a total of 17,776 hectares have been issued with land titles under Section 18 of the State Land Code involving 15,351 lots.”