Overview of economic development in Sabah since independence

Abstract

Since 1965, about a year after independence in 1963, the Sabah State Government embarked on numerous ambitious and imaginative development programmes in order to hasten the development of the State and bring it up to the level of development in other States in the Federation. However, judging from the limited information available and the increasing grouses of the people recently, the performance of these development programmes seems to be far short of expectations as reflected in the various development plans and programmes. Very broadly, this paper attempts to present highlights of the development performance of the Sabah economy since independence. This is undertaken by examining critically the past and to some extent the present: (i) development planning approach, (ii) State Government expenditure patterns, and (iii) State and sectoral economic development progress and performance in the context of major indicators such as output, growth rates, employment, and incidence of poverty. Since economic development in the State is to a large extent influenced by national economic policies, it is necessary to compare the progress and performance of Sabah to that of Malaysia as a whole throughout the discussions in this paper.