By Mohd Ustar Bin Haji Abdul Ghani, a lawyer and former senior customs enforcement officer
KOTA KINABALU: The import and export activities of Sabah are misleading and inaccurate. The source of these figures is the Department of Statistics Malaysia. How and where does DOSM extract these informations?.
The only government agency having jurisdiction and information over import and export activities in Malaysia is the Royal Malaysian Customs Department. RMCD controls every import and export transaction (except for goods smuggled into and out of Malaysia), of which the Department is deprived.
Import and export activities in Malaysia are regulated through prescribed forms declared, i.e., Customs Form No. 1 for importation and Customs Form No. 2 for exportation, and every declaration is copied to the Statistics Department.
Declarations are made at the customs stations where those goods are brought in (imported) or taken out (exported) of the country, i.e., if declarations were made at the North Port or South Port in Klang, then those activities are said to have been transacted in Selangor and revenues would have been collected there, and the same procedure would apply to every other state in Malaysia.
Insofar as Sabah and Sarawak are concerned, the import and export statistics provided by DOSM do not truly reflect their potential.
The quota policy provided by Section 65L and Section 65KA of the Malaysian Shipping Ordinance 1952 distorted statistics that would have otherwise recorded higher import and export activities and revenues collected from the two states.
Due to the Cabotage Policy, Sabah and Sarawak are not allowed to import or export directly from or to the intended destinations.
They can only be allowed to ship cargoes to any port in West Malaysia; thereupon, they can be imported to the intended destinations and vice versa (applies to export). For shipment to and from West Malaysia, they will use the prescribed Customs Form No. 3, which is neither considered an import nor an export as the transaction is within Malaysia, or otherwise by way of transhipment, using the prescribed Customs Form No. 8, which does not fall under the import or export category as defined under Section 2 of the Customs Act 1967.
Interesting to note: if Sabah and Sarawak are subjected to the same cabotage policy, why is Sarawak recording higher import and export activities than Sabah?
Sarawak, unlike Sabah, has a land border with two countries, namely Brunei, where there is a customs station designated in Miri (Sungai Tujoh) bordering Brunei and a land border in Tebedu and Serikin bordering Indonesia, which precludes the operation of the Malaysia Shipping Ordinance 1952 and allows import and export activities by land. As for Sabah, it has no land bordering any other countries, and I am sure the bulk of the import and export activities would have come from the barter trade activities with the Philippines and Indonesia, which do not fall within the ambit of the enacted MSO 1952.
Penang, of course, enjoys a myriad of import and export activities through its well-developed Penang Port; Selangor has Port Klang; Kuala Lumpur has both KLIA and KLIA2 under its jurisdiction; and Johor has 3 big ports: Pasir Gudang, Kompleks Sultan Abu Bakar (KSAB), and Bangunan Sultan Iskandar (BSI). Bordering Singapore saw thriving activities of import and export.
As for Perak, it has a land border with Thailand in Betong, Kedah has a land border with Thailand at Bukit Kayu Hitam and Durian Burong, and Perlis has a land border with Thailand at Padang Besar and Wang Kelian.
As to whether the information disseminated by the DOSM is accurate or skewed, I leave it to the imagination of the readers in this group.
