Felcra plays its role in Sarawak

By JACK WONG
jackwong@thestar.com.my

KUCHING: Sarawak has roped in Felcra Bhd to open up 10,000ha native customary rights (NCR) land for oil palm cultivation under a new development model.

State Land Development Minister Datuk Dr James Masing said Felcra would provide grants and soft loans to this pilot project in Passai Siong in Sibu Division, central Sarawak.

“As a government-linked company (GLC), Felcra will come in with grants and soft loans to fund the project,” he told StarBizWeek yesterday, adding that the agreement with Felcra was reached two weeks ago.

Masing said as the Federal Government was providing funding via Felcra for NCR land development for the first time, this would make the plantation venture more attractive and profitable to the landowners.

He said 90% of the profits from the project would be shared by the landowners while the remaining 10% would go to state Land Custody Development Authority (LCDA), the project's managing agent.

Felcra, which owns about 50,000ha oil palm plantation in Sarawak, will manage this pilot project with a fee.

“The 10,000ha is expected to be planted in the next two to three years,” said Masing.

To accelerate the development of large tracts idle or under-developed NCR land into oil palm estates, the Sarawak government introduced a new development concept several years ago that involves joint venture between the landowners and private investors.

The investors provide project funding while the LCDA acts as managing agent in these joint ventures to protect the landowners' interests.

Under this model, Masing said several plantation companies had cultivated oil palm on some 50,000ha NCR land although more land should have been opened up.

Masing said about 200,000ha NCR land and another 500,000ha state land had been earmarked for oil palm projects. Sarawak has some 1.5 million ha of NCR land, mostly without titles.

He said the ongoing NCR land perimeter survey, a state-Federal government initiative, would enable claimants to secure land ownership faster.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak approved RM20mil last year to carry out the survey via a two-step process with two deliverables.

First, the state government would identify NCR land in all divisions for en-bloc perimeter survey by the Land and Survey Department to segregate genuine NCR land from state land. The land will then be gazetted as native communal reserves that ensure claimants of their ownership within the gazetted area.

The second stage will require the NCR landowners themselves to sort out and agree on the boundaries of their land within the gazetted area to enable the department to carry out detailed survey, and subsequently issue individual land titles to them.

Masing said once the titles were issued, the NCR land would become an economic asset.

He said his ministry was streamlining the procedures to make it faster for oil palm joint-venture projects to be implemented. “We have endorsed a new timetable, from the time landowners ask us to develop their NCR land to actual planting, to within 18 months from the present 36 months.”

As the ministry was bogged down by red tapes and manpower constraints, it was slow to create landbank for planting and execute joint-venture agreements.

Due to these shortcomings, the state government's target to expand oil palm estates to one million ha by last year could not be met. Only more than 900,000ha was planted.