KUCHING: Chief Minister Datuk Patinggi Abang Johari Tun Openg has thrown a proposal to the LONGi Group of China to explore the possibility of developing floating solar parks at dams and rivers in the state. Instead of developing solar parks on land to produce energy, he suggested the new ways which if proven successful, would benefit the rural community which was still without electricity supply. He said the energy produced from floating solar parks could be connected to the rural power grid to supply electricity to the rural community.
The Chief Minister made the suggestion when he officiated at the launching ceremony of LONGi (Kuching) Sdn Bhd at Sama Jaya High Tech Park here yesterday. The company is the first integrated photo voltaic (PV) manufacturing base in a single location producing monocrystalline silicon ingots, wafers, cells and modules in the region. Sarawak is the only state in Malaysia where the company produces the entire solar value chain from polycrystalline silicon in Samalaju to solar ingots, wafers, cells and modules in Sama Jaya Hi Tech Pak here.
Apart from that, Johari said the state offered one of the most competitive electricity tariffs in this region because of its huge hydropower potential. “Besides powering the industries, we should also exploit our water resources for hydrogen fuel production, which is a new and clean energy source.
“In Japan, they are already talking about hydrogen society and we should take advantage of this new opportunity. Even our proposed LRT could be powered by hydrogen fuel,” he said. He added Sarawak was indeed, the right choice for LONGi, adding that within two years, LONGi has expanded aggressively to meet the growing demand of the global PV markets and its export value was expected to increase to RM1.5 billion this year.
“The state government will continue with its business friendly policies towards investments, both Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and Domestic Direct Investment (DDI). “Over the past five years, the state always ranked among the top three most favourable investment destinations in Malaysia and the total investments approved for Sarawak for the same period amounted to RM46.3 billion.
“At this juncture, I would also like to urge our local entrepreneurs, particularly the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to forge strong partnerships with these MNCs so as to create a win-win situation,” said Johari, adding the rapid expansion of LONGi as well as others (Taiyo Yuden and X-FAB) showed that foreign investors have high confidence in the state government.
Meanwhile, Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Amar Awang Tengah Ali Hassan, who is also the Minister for Industrial and Entrepreneur Development, said the foreign investments have created 10,800 job opportunities in Sama Jaya Tech Park. He said 99 percent of the workforce in Sama Jaya were locals with almost 10 percent of them were engineers.
“This shows that Sarawakians are capable and LONGi is expected to increase its workforce to 2,851 by end of this year to support its aggressive expansion plans,” he said, adding, so far, 120 have been sent to China for training. According to the Deputy Chief Minister, the annual salaries paid to the workforce in Sama Jaya alone stood at RM380 million in 2017 and has created many multiplier effects to the state’s local economy such as demand for food, housing, transportation, retail and entertainment and others.
“The state cannot continue to rely on low cost, low tech and labour intensive strategy for economic growth and the way forward for Sarawak to become a high income economy is through industrialisation, leveraging on the Digital Economy as a platform that will leapfrog our economy to the next level. “The investments from these MNCs in Sama Jaya High Tech Park will definitely create many economic spinoffs, which will benefit our local business communities.
Our local entrepreneurs, particularly SMEs must continuously upgrade their capabilities and capacities so as to meet the stringent requirements of these global players,” he stressed. Also present were State Secretary Tan Sri Datuk Amar Morshidi Abdul Ghani, LONGi Chairman Zhong Baoshen and LONGi (Kuching) Sdn Bhd Chief Executive Officer Ngieng Sii Jing.
