By DANIEL JOHN JAMBUN, President Borneo’s Plight in Malaysia Foundation (BoPiMaFo)
KOTA KINABALU: Borneo’s Plight in Malaysia Foundation (BoPiMaFo) welcomes and supports the central argument advanced by political analyst Dr Arnold Puyok that Sabah should chart its own course rather than simply copying Sarawak.
We agree.
Sabah does not need to become another Sarawak.
Sabah and Sarawak share important historical, constitutional and geographical similarities, but they are not identical. Each has its own political history, demographic circumstances, institutions, economic structure and development challenges.
Sabah therefore needs a Sabah model.
But saying Sabah should not copy Sarawak must never become an excuse for refusing to compare Sabah’s performance with Sarawak.
Sarawak should be Sabah’s benchmark, not Sabah’s blueprint.
And once we make that comparison, some very uncomfortable questions arise.
SABAH DOES NOT HAVE A RESOURCE PROBLEM
Sabah is extraordinarily rich in natural resources.
We have oil and gas.
We have timber and forests.
We have minerals.
We have vast oil-palm plantations.
We have fertile agricultural land.
We have fisheries and extensive coastlines.
We possess internationally renowned tourism assets and biodiversity.
We occupy a strategic geographical position in the South China Sea, Sulu Sea and the wider BIMP-EAGA region.
So why does a territory with so much natural wealth remain economically weaker than Sarawak?
Sabah’s problem is clearly not simply an absence of resources.
The more fundamental problem is that decades of resource extraction have not been successfully converted into sufficient Sabah-owned economic power, strategic industries and inter-generational wealth.
That is where Sabah must begin its self-examination.
AN ESTIMATED 90 PER CENT OF SABAH’S OIL PALM IN NON-SABAH HANDS
Consider palm oil.
Datuk John Lo, a retired banker and adviser in Sabah’s own economic advisory institutions, recently estimated that approximately 90 per cent of Sabah’s oil-palm plantations are now controlled by non-Sabah interests.
Sabah has about 1.74 million hectares of oil palm, yet John Lo also highlighted how much crude palm oil leaves Sabah for downstream processing elsewhere.
That means the problem is bigger than land ownership.
When raw materials leave Sabah for processing elsewhere, Sabah potentially loses:
downstream industries;
high-value employment;
manufacturing;
technology;
corporate headquarters;
business profits;
and the economic multiplier generated by value-added production.
Sabah supplies the commodity while other places capture much of the higher-value economic activity.
After decades as one of Malaysia’s great palm-oil producing territories, Sabahans should therefore ask:
Where are Sabah’s world-class downstream palm-oil corporations?
Where are our major oleochemical industries?
Where are our sustainable aviation fuel industries?
Where are our high-value Sabah-owned manufacturers based upon the enormous agricultural wealth generated from our own land?
Producing raw materials is not the same as controlling economic wealth.
WHAT ABOUT SABAH’S MINERAL WEALTH?
Sabah’s minerals should become another great pillar of long-term economic strength.
Instead, mineral licensing has become associated with highly damaging corruption controversies.
There have been investigations and criminal proceedings involving allegations relating to mineral exploration licences.
Those facing criminal charges are entitled to the presumption of innocence and the courts must determine guilt or innocence.
But the controversy itself raises a much larger policy question.
Why should Sabah merely allocate access to valuable minerals and then remain primarily a royalty collector?
Why should major mineral opportunities not be structured so that Sabah itself retains substantial ownership and economic participation?
Sabah already possesses institutions such as Yayasan Sabah.
Where technology, expertise and investment capital are required, outside companies can become strategic partners.
But partnership does not require Sabah to surrender the commanding economic interest.
The proper principle should be:
Sabah owns the resource.
Sabah participates substantially in developing it.
Sabah builds downstream industries from it.
Sabahans obtain the expertise and employment.
Sabah-owned institutions retain substantial profits.
Future generations inherit the accumulated wealth.
That is how natural resources become economic power.
AFTER GENERATIONS OF TIMBER EXTRACTION — WHERE IS THE WEALTH?
Sabah was once extraordinarily wealthy in timber.
For generations, huge quantities of timber were extracted.
Sabahans therefore have every right to ask:
Who ultimately benefited from those concessions?
How much downstream industry was created in Sabah?
How many strong Sabah-owned timber corporations emerged?
How much of the wealth was preserved for future generations?
And where is the accumulated inter-generational fund representing decades of extraction from Sabah’s forests?
Long-term forestry arrangements can extend for many decades.
That makes transparency over ownership, beneficial interests, performance and returns to Sabah even more important.
Our forests should not merely enrich concessionaires.
They should build Sabah.
SABAH FOREST INDUSTRIES — HOW DID IT COME TO THIS?
Sabah Forest Industries should also be remembered.
SFI was once a significant industrial undertaking.
Yet in May 2026, the Federal Court refused leave for SFI to appeal after the Court of Appeal had affirmed that the company was lawfully wound up and hopelessly insolvent. Its timber concessions had also been cancelled.
How does an important industrial undertaking connected to one of Sabah’s greatest natural resources eventually reach that position?
This deserves serious examination because Sabah cannot afford to repeat such failures.
Industrial assets should grow with time.
They should create skills, employment, manufacturing capacity and profits.
They should not disappear leaving Sabahans asking what went wrong.
THE PITAS PRAWN FARM
We must also remember the abandoned Pitas prawn-farming project.
The present Chief Minister himself announced in 2025 that efforts would be made to revive the abandoned prawn farm with Yayasan Sabah and a private-sector partner.
That immediately raises legitimate questions.
How much was originally invested?
How much involved Yayasan Sabah or public resources?
How much was lost?
What assets remain?
Why did the project fail?
Was there an independent performance or forensic audit?
Who was accountable for the commercial decisions?
If public or Yayasan Sabah money was lost, Sabahans deserve the figures.
Failed projects should not simply disappear from public memory.
SABAH DEVELOPMENT BANK — A SERIOUS WARNING
Sabah Development Bank should be one of Sabah’s strongest economic institutions.
Instead, its financial position demonstrates the seriousness of Sabah’s institutional challenges.
SDB’s own audited financial highlights record Group losses before tax of approximately RM880 million in 2023, RM86 million in 2024 and RM740 million in 2025.
Those figures demand attention.
Sabahans are entitled to ask:
How did such large impairment losses accumulate?
Who received the problematic loans?
What projects were financed?
What security was obtained?
What due diligence was undertaken?
How much can ultimately be recovered?
SDB is not just another private commercial bank.
It is wholly owned by the Sabah Government and exists to help develop Sabah.
Its success or failure therefore matters directly to Sabahans.
SABAH’S SICK AND NON-PERFORMING GLCs
Then we come to perhaps one of Sabah’s biggest structural weaknesses — our Government-linked companies.
GLCs should be among Sabah’s greatest strengths.
They should convert State-owned assets and commercial opportunities into:
profits;
strategic industries;
employment;
technology;
dividends;
and long-term wealth.
Instead, Datuk John Lo publicly described a majority of Sabah’s roughly 250 GLCs as financial “blackholes”.
He reported that the statutory bodies and GLCs discussed generated only RM143 million in dividends, with a relatively small number responsible for much of the positive performance.
Not every Sabah GLC is a failure.
There are successful companies, and their success proves precisely why Sabahans should demand more.
If some Sabah GLCs can be professionally managed and profitable, why should chronically underperforming ones continue indefinitely?
BoPiMaFo therefore asks:
How many of Sabah’s approximately 250 GLCs are profitable?
How many are loss-making?
What is their combined debt?
How much State money has been injected into them?
How many depend upon Government guarantees or support?
What assets do they control?
What returns do those assets generate?
How are their chairmen, directors and senior executives selected?
Are appointments principally based on professional expertise, or political considerations?
Publish the information.
Sabahans are ultimately the owners.
GRS CANNOT SIMPLY SAY THESE PROBLEMS WERE INHERITED
There is sometimes a tendency to describe Sabah’s present weaknesses as problems inherited from previous governments.
Certainly many problems accumulated over several administrations.
But that explanation has obvious limitations.
There has been substantial continuity in Sabah’s political leadership.
Chief Minister Datuk Seri Hajiji Noor did not enter Sabah politics when GRS was created.
His political career stretches back decades. He was previously a senior Sabah UMNO leader and served in the former Barisan Nasional State Government.
Likewise, Datuk Seri Masidi Manjun served as a senior Sabah UMNO leader and State Minister during the BN era.
In 2018 Hajiji was Sabah UMNO liaison chairman while Masidi was Sabah UMNO secretary.
Today Hajiji is Chief Minister and GRS chairman while Masidi is Deputy Chief Minister, Finance Minister and a senior GRS leader.
The political vehicles changed.
Many political personalities remained.
It is therefore too convenient to divide Sabah’s history into:
“the failures of the previous government”
and
“the innocence of the present government.”
BoPiMaFo is not suggesting that Hajiji, Masidi or any individual GRS leader personally caused every failed project, concession, bad loan or institutional weakness of previous decades.
That would be unfair.
But leaders who have participated in Sabah politics and government for decades cannot present themselves as newcomers who only recently discovered Sabah’s problems.
Their experience creates greater responsibility, not less.
After decades in political life, Sabahans are entitled to ask:
What have you learned?
What have you changed?
What have you repaired?
What institutions have become stronger?
What failed systems have been reformed?
What Sabah-owned industries have been created?
What wealth has been protected for the next generation?
Those are legitimate measures of leadership.
SABAH’S POPULATION PROBLEM DID NOT FALL FROM THE SKY
Dr Arnold’s discussion also highlights Sabah’s very different demographic circumstances.
That is important.
But when Sabah’s rapid population growth is cited as one explanation for why Sabah faces greater development pressures than Sarawak, another question must immediately follow:
Who caused the conditions that produced Sabah’s extraordinary demographic problem?
Sabah’s demographic history cannot be discussed without the Royal Commission of Inquiry on immigrants in Sabah.
Evidence considered by the RCI highlighted the extraordinary increase in Sabah’s population over several decades and examined the improper issuance of Malaysian identification documents to foreigners.
The RCI found serious abuses involving identity documentation and concluded that the clandestine exercise popularly associated with “Project IC” more likely than not existed.
Of course, not every increase in Sabah’s population resulted from Project IC.
Natural population growth, lawful migration, refugees and employment-related migration also contributed.
But neither can anyone honestly discuss Sabah’s demographic burden while pretending that the history examined by the RCI did not happen.
The consequences are enormous.
A greatly enlarged population increases pressure on:
schools;
hospitals;
housing;
roads;
water;
electricity;
employment;
land;
public security;
and State finances.
Therefore, if Sabah’s unusual demographic burden is used to explain why Sabah lags behind Sarawak, then the historical causes of that burden must also be acknowledged.
And another question follows:
Why have the recommendations arising from the RCI still not been fully implemented?
The Federal Government cannot use Sabah’s demographic difficulties as an explanation for development pressures while avoiding responsibility for failures involving federal-controlled systems of citizenship, national registration and security.
At the same time, successive Sabah Governments must pursue the matter relentlessly.
THIS IS WHERE SARAWAK BECOMES THE BENCHMARK
None of this means Sarawak is perfect.
Sarawak has its own weaknesses, controversies and economic challenges.
But look at the strategic direction in which Sarawak is moving.
Sarawak has established SMD Semiconductor and adopted a Semiconductor Roadmap 2030 aimed at developing higher-value capabilities such as chip design and building local technological talent.
Sarawak is pursuing renewable energy and hydrogen.
It is strengthening State participation in strategic industries.
It is pursuing downstream activities.
It is developing food-security strategies, including a State-level approach to padi and rice production.
It is increasingly asking:
How do we use the resources and institutions of Sarawak to make Sarawak economically stronger tomorrow than it is today?
That mindset matters.
AND WHAT IS SABAH’S ANSWER?
What major industries will Sabah lead by 2035?
What technologies are we mastering?
Where is Sabah’s semiconductor strategy?
Where is our major downstream mineral strategy?
Where is our advanced palm-oil value chain?
Where is our Sabah-controlled inter-generational investment fund built from decades of resource wealth?
Which Sabah-owned corporations are being prepared to compete regionally or globally?
What proportion of Sabah’s strategic industries will actually be owned by Sabah interests ten years from now?
What will our GLCs be worth?
What will Sabah Development Bank become?
What new industrial skills will our young Sabahans possess?
These are questions about the future.
They cannot be answered with press releases announcing billions of ringgit in proposed investment.
Investment announcements are not the same as economic ownership.
SABAH MUST STOP EXPORTING ITS STRENGTH
This is the fundamental problem.
Sabah cannot keep exporting raw materials and importing finished value.
We cannot produce crude palm oil while downstream employment and profits go elsewhere.
We cannot possess minerals while Sabah’s role is reduced primarily to issuing licences.
We cannot extract forests for generations without building permanent inter-generational wealth.
We cannot allow public corporations to become liabilities instead of economic engines.
And we cannot continue allowing valuable Sabah opportunities to strengthen others more than they strengthen Sabah.
Sarawak increasingly converts its resources into strategic capacity.
Sabah too often exports its economic strength away.
BUT PUTRAJAYA ALSO HAS RESPONSIBILITIES
Sabah’s failures of governance do not absolve the Federal Government of its constitutional obligations.
Sabah must continue demanding the full implementation of its constitutional 40 per cent entitlement under Articles 112C and 112D and the Tenth Schedule of the Federal Constitution.
Sabah must insist upon meaningful implementation of MA63.
Sabah must defend its immigration safeguards.
Sabah must pursue Borneonisation.
Sabah must safeguard its territorial and natural-resource interests.
And the recommendations arising from the RCI on immigrants in Sabah cannot simply be forgotten.
This is not an either-or argument.
Putrajaya must honour Sabah’s constitutional rights.
Kota Kinabalu must manage Sabah competently.
Both are necessary.
AUTONOMY WITHOUT GOOD GOVERNANCE IS NOT ENOUGH
Suppose Sabah obtained billions of ringgit more in revenue tomorrow.
Suppose greater administrative powers were returned tomorrow.
Suppose Sabah obtained substantially greater control over natural resources tomorrow.
If the additional money then disappeared into poorly conceived projects, sick GLCs, bad lending, opaque concessions, patronage or corruption, would ordinary Sabahans become prosperous?
Obviously not.
That is why constitutional autonomy and good governance cannot be separated.
Sabah needs both:
greater control over its destiny; and
institutions competent enough to exercise that control responsibly.
Otherwise we merely transfer power without transforming Sabah.
THE REAL QUESTION FOR GRS
GRS frequently speaks about Sabah’s progress and the Sabah Maju Jaya agenda.
BoPiMaFo therefore asks the Government to show Sabahans the long-term economic architecture behind those slogans.
What will Sabah own?
What industries will Sabah control?
What resources will Sabah process locally?
What intellectual property will Sabah develop?
What strategic assets will Sabah accumulate?
How much inter-generational wealth will be created?
What will GRS leave behind after it eventually leaves office?
Governments must ultimately be judged not by announcements but by what they build.
DR ARNOLD PUYOK IS RIGHT — SABAH MUST CHART ITS OWN COURSE
This brings us back to Dr Arnold Puyok.
He is right.
Sabah should not blindly copy Sarawak.
Our circumstances are different.
Our demographic problem is different.
Our political history is different.
Our economic structure is different.
Our institutional weaknesses are different.
Therefore Sabah requires its own solutions.
But the comparison with Sarawak remains essential because Sarawak demonstrates that the present condition of Sabah is not inevitable.
If another resource-rich Borneo territory within the same Federation can progressively build stronger financial capacity, strategic institutions and new industries, Sabahans have every right to ask why Sabah has struggled to do likewise.
That is not jealousy.
That is benchmarking.
That is accountability.
And that is precisely what responsible governments do.
SARAWAK SHOULD BE OUR BENCHMARK — NOT OUR BLUEPRINT
BoPiMaFo therefore proposes a simple principle:
Learn from Sarawak.
Cooperate with Sarawak.
Stand together with Sarawak when our constitutional interests coincide.
But build Sabah according to Sabah’s own needs.
A genuine Sabah model should be founded upon:
Sabah ownership;
Sabah-controlled strategic institutions;
professional and profitable GLCs;
transparent resource concessions;
strong anti-corruption safeguards;
downstream industrialisation;
technology transfer;
human-capital development;
food and energy security;
responsible resource management;
and inter-generational wealth creation.
SABAH’S PROBLEM IS NOT A LACK OF WEALTH
After more than six decades, Sabahans should finally recognise a difficult truth:
Sabah has never been poor in resources.
What Sabah has lacked is the sustained ability to convert those resources into enduring economic power belonging substantially to Sabah and its people.
The fundamental question is therefore no longer:
“Why can’t Sabah become Sarawak?”
