KUCHING: Sarawak received a total of 1,240 participants in the Sarawak-Malaysia My Second Home (S-MM2H) programme from 2007 to 2019.
S-MM2H is a programme under the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture (Motac) to attract visitors for long-term stay in Sarawak.
According to the Minister of Tourism, Arts, and Culture Datuk Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah, Sarawak started to adopt the MM2H programme in January 2007, and had recorded good number of participants in the past 13 years.
“In 2019, there were 226 successful applicants compared to 103 successful applicants in 2018. This was a sharp increase of 119 percent in the number of successful applications,” he said in a press conference on the enhanced S-MM2H programme at Baitul Makmur building on Friday.
He said although the federal government had decided to temporarily suspend the MM2H programme until Dec 31, 2020 to allow Motac and related agencies to comprehensively review and re-evaluate the programme, his ministry would continue to open up the S-MM2H programme to interested foreigners.
“They are welcome to apply for the S-MM2H programme through my ministry,” he said.
He added the S-MM2H programme would not be affected by the suspension of the federal MM2H programme.
“The global Covid-19 outbreak coupled with the enforcement of movement restrictions and border control has caused a sharp decline in travel and leisure. This has resulted in unprecedented severe impact on the tourism sector,” he said.
He said from Jan to July 2020, the number of tourist arrivals to Sarawak was 1,033,961 and compared to 2,577,680 visitors for the same period last year, resulting in 59.8 percent decline of visitors to the state.
“In July last year, the number of arrivals was 347,483. Unfortunately for July this, it was only 72,705, which is a 78.1 percent decline. I am really sad just looking at the numbers,” he said, while hoping with more flights allowed to fly into Sarawak, the figure would increase.
“Therefore, as part of our response to the post Covid-19 recovery, Sarawak needs to continue to actively diversify its tourism beyond leisure tourism by looking at the potential of S-MM2H in bringing quality visitors to Sarawak.
“The promotion of high yield quality tourism like S-MM2H programme for longer stays would certainly benefit the tourism sector through the potential revenue and residential investments,” he said.
Abdul Karim said his ministry was expecting the S-MM2H programme to have 1,000 new participants generating an estimated RM8.34 million in revenue and RM31 million in investment by 2030.
