Sarawak State Budget 2021 to propose allocation of fund to reinvigorate local tourism industry

I have wel­comed the pro­posed RM252 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion un­der our State's 2021 Bud­get for our Min­istry of Tourism, Arts and Culture Sarawak to carry out var­i­ous tourism pro­grammes in­clud­ing mar­ket­ing and pro­mo­tion, bid­ding for busi­ness events, fes­ti­vals and events as well as tourism in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­ment.

This is because Sarawak’s tourism sec­tor is in need of a boost as it has grown sig­nif­i­cantly over the past decade in terms of con­tribut­ing to the growth of the state’s econ­omy and bring­ing in for­eign and do­mes­tic tourists. How­ever, the sit­u­a­tion is damp­ened by the Covid-19 pan­demic cou­pled with the move­ment re­stric­tion which has caused a sharp de­cline in travel and leisure ac­tiv­i­ties.

As what the Chief Min­is­ter had men­tioned in his bud­get speech, our tourism sec­tor is one of the badly hit by the Covid-19 pan­demic and it had also im­pacted on the lives of our lo­cal folks who are in­volved in the in­dus­try at all lev­els.

Thus, it is im­por­tant for the govern­ment to con­tinue to pro­vide al­lo­ca­tion to de­velop new tourism attractions while up­grad­ing the ex­ist­ing ones which will be ready to re­ceive the ex­pected in­flux of tourists when the sit­u­a­tion im­proves.

As the state assemblyman for Asa­jaya, I have pointed out that our Right Honourable Chief Minister, Abang Jo­hari Tun Abang Haji Openg, when tabling the 2021 State Bud­get, had noted that the pro­posed al­lo­ca­tion is for the de­vel­op­ment, re­fur­bish­ment and im­prove­ment works on the Sarawak Cul­ture Mu­seum, San­tubong Ar­chae­o­log­i­cal Park and Wal­lace Cen­tre, Per­form­ing Arts Cen­tre at the Old DUN Build­ing, cas­cad­ing wa­ter­fall at Fort Margherita, up­grad­ing of Wind Cave and Fairy Cave, up­grad­ing of forts in­clud­ing Fort Emma, Fort Lily, Fort Brooke and Fort Sylvia, trans­for­ma­tion of Brooke Dock­yard into a Mar­itime Mu­seum, and Sadong Jaya man­grove tourism.

On behalf of our ministry, we would like to record our ap­pre­ci­a­tion to the Chief Min­is­ter for the pro­posed al­lo­ca­tion which shows how much the Gabun­gan Parti Sarawak (GPS) govern­ment has al­ways placed the well-be­ing of the peo­ple as the pri­or­ity in all of its plan­ning and ac­tions.

This is also in line with our strug­gle in pro­tect­ing the rights and safe­guard­ing the in­ter­ests of Sarawak un­der the motto ‘Pri­ori­tise Sarawak; Sarawak First’. With this com­mit­ment, the 2021 State Bud­get will fo­cus on the need to re­vive and re­de­velop the state’s econ­omy by ac­cel­er­at­ing the im­ple­men­ta­tion of var­i­ous in­fra­struc­ture projects in­clud­ing in­fra­struc­ture fa­cil­i­ties, pub­lic fa­cil­i­ties, dig­i­tal eco­nomic ini­tia­tives, hous­ing, ed­u­ca­tion, tal­ent de­vel­op­ment and so­cial de­vel­op­ment.

This mea­sure will also have mul­ti­plier ef­fects that will cre­ate bet­ter job op­por­tu­ni­ties, im­prove the liv­ing stan­dards of lo­cal folks, and to en­sure busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity for the good of the com­mu­nity. Even though our econ­omy is ex­pected to con­tract be­tween 3.5 per cent and 5 per cent this year, we will con­tinue to per­se­vere while ac­cept­ing the de­cline in tourism sec­tor has spill-over ef­fect on other ser­vices sec­tors, par­tic­u­larly af­fect­ing the trans­port and lo­gis­tics, ho­tel and ac­com­mo­da­tions, whole­sale and re­tail trade as well as food and bev­er­ages in­dus­tries.

We must understand that our tourism sec­tor was among the worst hit by the Covid-19 pan­demic where for the first nine months of this year, vis­i­tor ar­rivals had con­tracted by 64.1 per cent due to travel restric­tions and clo­sure of in­ter­na­tional bor­der. Hence, ef­forts must be made to re­vive the sec­tor and to ren­der as­sis­tance to those who are in­volved in the in­dus­try.