What we all ought to do for Malaysia

My Dear Friends,

The current oil and food price hikes had prompted me to ponder and dig a little deeper into ways and means of how our limited resources can be further consolidated and utilised for the benefits to our country.

Our country is so blessed with a wealth of raw materials, both on land and from the sea. We have a very rich oil reserve that has yet to be fully tapped. We are also still one of the world's largest producers of natural rubber. Our palm oil production is also one of the biggest in the world. By right Malaysia should stand proud on the world map. Petroleum is somehow our greatest life saver, without which this country had long gone bankrupt. We should be grateful to Allah for this. What Petronas should be doing now is to fully develop downstream activities relating to this oil production industry.

University Petronas, funded by Petronas, should play a more proactive role to develop and produce quality petroleum engineers that can benefit the petroleum industry through their professional knowledge and R&D. Currently, there is no such thing taking place, the University Petronas is just churning out ordinary general Engineering graduates, just like other local universities.

Oil exploration should be concentrated locally. Foreign joint ventures should be put on hold. We have many oil reserves that have yet to be explored and developed. We need not worry about the future of Malaysia without oil. By then nuclear energy would have become a common household phenomena. Current oil crisis must be addressed by current means. We should do so right now. Petronas's claim that exploration costs are prohibitive is baseless. Petronas must develop the local petroleum industry to the fullest before going overseas. Use our local expertise to help them gain the much needed experience. Malaysia can set to be the next economic giant of Asia if the mind set of Petronas's top management can be tuned towards more progressive and inovative change. I'm not suggesting that the top man of Petronas needs to be removed to make way for new blood but the sentiment is there.

We must not just strive to be the worlds largest producer of natural rubber or palm oil. We should by now try to become the world's largest producer of rubber products such as tyres, construction materials, domestic and industrial items, and food products such as palm oil-based cooking materials that can help reduce our foreign exchange and dependence on imports. We may not be the world's largest producer of petroleum but certainly we can start becoming a significant producer of lubricating oil, oil and fuel additives, oil-based construction materials etc. In other words, Malaysia must strive to work harder towards becoming an industrialised country without compromising on food production. Japan and Korea are two good regional examples that we can proudly emulate. Time is running out for Malaysia. Natural oil will not last forever, neither palm oil or natural rubber. We cannot be too dependent on other countries to plant our rubber or palm oil trees as their policies may change.

Fishing is anothere area that Malaysia must not overlook. Malaysia is surrounded by a vast coast line. Our waters are very rich in fish. Why are we still importing fish from Thailand? We should be exporting fish and related sea products to other countries, like what Japan is doing. Why spend millions on the Fishery Department and the newly established Coastguard when the rights of our fishermen cannot be fully protected? Many cases of piracies and abductions of our fishermen still go unsolved until today. These agencies must go all out to justify their existence to ensure our fishing industry is protected and not robbed by foreigners.

I would like to advise the present government to buck up and stop all the political rhetorics and start implementing all the necessary policies to make Malaysia self sustaining economically. We must produce not only for own consumption and exports, but also to flood the local market whenever there is a shortage and this can help bring down the prices. This is so where current rice issues are concerned. We have ample land for rice growing but not enough incentives for the farmers. The Agricultural Ministry is too lethargic and not seen as progressive enough. There is too much rhetorics by the politicians with very little output. Take a drive along the many highways of Malaysia and you would see vast empty lands stretching for miles beyond. A major portion of Malaysia has yet to be developed agriculturally. Developing new townships and building rows of shoplots cannot help feed the people. They only help to make the developers richer. Tq.