Sarawak has an abundance of natural resources. LNG and petroleum have provided the mainstay of the Malaysia federal government's economy for decades while State of Sarawak only get 5% royalty from it. Sarawak is also one of the world's largest exporters of tropical hardwood timber and is the major contributor to Malaysian exports. This has led to wide scale deforestation of Sarawak's rainforest. The last UN statistics estimated Sarawak's sawlog exports at an average of 14,109,000 m³ between 1996 and 2000 [5].
With such vast land expanse, Sarawak has large tracts of land suitable for commercial agricultural development. Approximately 32% or about 40,000 km² of the state's total land area has been identified as suitable agricultural land. Nevertheless, less than 9% of this is planted with productive permanent crops, while the balance is still under shifting cultivation for hill paddy (rice) which is estimated at more than 16,000 km². The main commercial crops are oil palm, which has been increasing steadily over the years, sago, and pepper.
Since the 1980s, Sarawak has started to diversify and transform its economy into a more industrialised one. This endeavour has been seeing continuing success, with manufacturing and high-tech industries now playing a significant role in shaping the economic expansion of the state.
As the largest state in Malaysia, Sarawak aims to be a fully developed state along with the rest of the country by 2020. Sarawak has identified four sectors as key sources of growth:
- manufacturing
- commercial agriculture
- construction
- services sectors
The availability of vast competitively-priced land and rich reserves of natural resources has made Sarawak an attractive choice for manufacturing operations among investors.
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