GEORGE TOWN, Feb 26 — The Ministry of Agriculture and Agro-based Industry (MoA) is setting up a special unit to draw investments for the agrofood and agriculture sector, said Deputy Minister Sim Tze Tzin.

The Bayan Baru MP said the unit will oversee all investment matters such as permits, approvals and make it easier for investors to come to Malaysia.

"The government has outlined six sectors that have high investment potential — ruminant industry, input industry such as seeds, fertilizers and animal feed, floriculture, research and design, technology and mechanisation, tropical fruits and aquaculture,” he said.

He said the ministry encourages participation and investment by the private sector in large scale and high technology agriculture activities with best agronomic practices.

"Many people may not know, the government gives similar or even better incentives to investors who set up factories in Malaysia,” he said in his speech at the Penang International Business and Investment Summit (PIBIS) here.

Sim said the ministry is also in the process of setting up an action committee on agriculture at the district level to better help farmers.

"Currently, there are so many different agencies that the farmers have to go through if they have any problems, so instead of them having to go from one agency to another, we have this action committee to handle all of their problems,” he said.

Earlier, he said Malaysia is well positioned to be an agriculture food production hub.

"Malaysia is strategically located in South-east Asia with a 750 million population, and China and India with 2.5 billion people combined. All these 3.3 billion people need food, vegetables, fish and fruits every day,” he said.

He said Malaysia can be a major food producing country like Thailand or the Netherlands.

"The way forward is to transform Malaysia into high tech, modern farming country so we want to transform the agriculture sector, apply mechanisation and use big data,” he said.

He said many farmers are turning to high tech farming through use of LED lighting and air conditioning rooms to plant organic vegetables in cities.

"Drones are increasingly used to spray fertilizer and pesticides nowadays,” he said.

He said the ministry is also starting to invest in big data to collect data on all things agriculture so that in the future, market demands can be predicted for future planning.

"The Ministry of Agriculture will also transform MoA to be more business and farmer-friendly as we want to attract investments into agriculture, be it small investments of tens of thousands to large investments of millions of ringgits,” he said.

He said this is why the government is looking into measures to facilitate and encourage investment in the agrofood sector.