Palembang, Sumsel - Pahang and South Sumatera in Indonesia have a huge potential for working together in various areas including education, economy and tourism.
Chairman of the Pahang State Committee for Science, Innovation, Information and Information Technology Datuk Mohd Sharkar Shamsuddin said collaboration between the two states in these areas will boost their mutual economic and social development.
‘Palembang city alone has a population of 1.5 million people, and southern Sumatera 8.0 million people,‘ he told Bernama here today following a recent visit to Indonesia.
This is the first time that the Pahang state government has made an official visit to Palembang and it is confident of a big potential for collaboration between the state and the Indonesian city, said Mohd Sharkar who represented Menteri Besar Pahang Datuk Seri Adnan Yaakob duringthevisit.
Southern Sumatra still has a large undeveloped land area while Pahang has the expertise in sustainable land development including plantation development and crop planting.
Pahang expects to make a second visit to Palembang with entrepreneurs and representatives from local plantation companies to look at land and agriculture development opportunities there.
During the three-day visit, Mohd Sharkar said visits were also made to the Walikota of Palembang Ir Eddy Santana Putra and the representative of Southern Sumatera Governor Prof Dr Mahyudin NS Spog.
Mohd Sharkar said Sumatera was looking out for investors from Pahang to invest in its industrial, services, tourism, infrastructure and agriculture sectors.
He, however, added that although tourists from Palembang visited Malaysia, they were more familiar with Melaka, Penang, Kuala Lumpur and even Genting Highlands but did not know much about the state of Pahang in which Genting Highlands is.
‘Therefore, we feel that there is a need to promote Pahang more so that cooperation in the area of tourism can be also strengthened,‘ he said.
As for education, Mohd Sharkar said the state also expected to send students from Pahang to Palembang in the future, adding that were 50 Malaysian students studying medicine in Universiti Sriwijaya in Palembang.
He said the Pahang Foundation was already sponsoring students to study in various fields in Jakarta, Pekan Baru and Medan.
Source: www.bernama.com (4 Agustus 2007)
