Hong
KOTA KINABALU: The Kota Kinabalu Fishing Boat Owners Association (KKFBOA) has appealed to the state government to exempt the fishing sector from the State Sales Tax.
Its president, Simon Hong, said that KKFBOA which is an affiliate of the Fisheries and Fishing Boat Owners Associations Federation, has been applying for exemption since the State Sales Tax was introduced in early 2015 and is still doing it till today.
Hong said that KKFBOA represents fishing boat owners in Kota Kinabalu who own a total of 120 trawlers and 35 ‘pukat jerut’ trawlers. They produce more than 80 per cent of the total fish landings in Kota Kinabalu.
“We are active in the commercial scale of the fishing sector and have contributed a lot in the development of the fishing industry and economic development of Sabah, especially supplying catches (protein sources) for the domestic market and factories based on fishery products to be value added for the domestic and international markets,” he said.
According to Hong, the majority of the catch landed was pelagic fish and on average the percentage of buyers was 30 per cent by the domestic market and 70 per cent by factories based on fishery products.
This scenario is the cheapest in Malaysia as the domestic market is very limited unlike in Peninsular Malaysia when there is access supply, it can be marketed to the states there via land transport.
The price there is also better and this scenario does not happen here because of the limited districts in the state, he lamented, adding that surplus supply will be sold to factories based on fishery products at a price that is set by the factory operators.
Hong said that the implementation of the sales tax will result in many negative impacts on the fishing boat owners because they will be the ones who will have to bear the cost.
The boat owners have no choice but to comply with the deduction because of the limited domestic market, Hong said and stressed that the tax will also increase the cash flow burden on the boat owners as they are also facing increasing operational and repair costs, foreign workers’ bond and other costs.
They are also burdened by the decreasing catch in the past few years due to the unpredictable weather as well as the Covid-19 pandemic now, he lamented.
“If the sales tax collected is RM10 million a year, this means that the fishing boat owners will have to bear an additional cost of RM10 million. This is a huge sum and it burdens us because we could have used the money to improve our fishing operation, repair our boats and also to cover the expenses of trawler operators which have to stop fishing during the monsoon season in November to February as well as for the continuity of developing the fisheries industry, especially the fishing sector,” he said.
“We therefore appeal to Chief Minister Datuk Seri Panglima Hajiji Noor to exempt the fishing sector from the five per cent sales tax as was granted to the aquaculture sector,” Hong said.