KOTA KINABALU: Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Seri Panglima Yahya Hussin has called on the federal government to ensure funding can be channelled on time this year to enable agriculture development programmes to be carried out effectively.
monthly gathering: Yahya delivering his speech at the monthly gathering.
Yahya explained that the state did receive all the agricultural funding committed by the federal government but some came a bit later.
“Our financial performance with regards to spending of federal funding to implement projects in Sabah is quite good, with above 70 per cent of them spent.
“Our main challenge is to achieve the National Key Result Area (NKRA) and 10th Malaysia Plan (10MP) objectives, apart from the set productivity levels.
“That is why it is very important for me to say out loud to the officers of all ranks to know what are being stored for them by the government,” said the Agriculture and Food Industry Minister after launching the monthly gathering of his ministry here yesterday.
He disclosed that the ministry’s target this year also includes pursuing further certification or accreditation in accordance with the world standard or requirement for agro-products from Sabah to enable them to be exported without any problem.
“This is to ensure that we will not receive any complaints when exporting our local agro-products,” he said.
Touching on the ministry’s performance for 2010, Yahya said overall, he was happy with the agriculture sector’s achievement.
“We will be happier if this year we can achieve more than that. We need to double up the effort.”
Earlier in his speech, Yahya said it was also important for the ministry to draw up short and long-term plans to ensure there is enough fresh milk supplies for the whole country.
With Sabah leading the 1Malaysia milk programme, he said there is a need to ensure that the state will be able to meet the target of meeting the needs for 56 million litres of milk a year by 2012.
Therefore, he called for a more aggressive approach to be implemented and ensure that all cattle breeders in the state improve their skills in producing fresh milk.
“Through such integrated efforts, I believe Sabah will be free from all kinds of diseases that could jeopardise agriculture, livestock and breading sectors thus winning the recognition from the World Organisation for Animal Health,” he said.
He added that bio-security and proactive measures should be practised by all farm operators to prevent diseases such as avian influenza (H5N1), Pan A H1N1, leptospirosis, anthrax and rabies.