After almost 60 years of failure, Sabah tries again to achieve self-sufficiency in rice
Rice is big business. But this realisation seems to have dawned on Sabah politicians rather belatedly. The east Malaysian state spends about a billion ringgit a year on imported rice to meet almost all its consumption as self-sufficiency in the food crop has dropped to a dangerous 22 per cent. Sabah imports most of its rice from Thailand, Vietnam, China, Pakistan and India. In almost 60 years, it has never met its 60 per cent self-sufficiency target first set in 1965 with the setting up of the Sabah Padi Board which was later mired in allegations of corruption and mismanagement. It was wound up in 1981 after chalking up massive losses and debts. Now the Sabah government is reviving it to do what it had failed to do.
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