The Chief Minister, who arrived in Finland yesterday at the start of a fortnight study visit to Europe, said he was highly impressed with the use of digital tools to manage the forest industry in the state.

Such tools, which entails widespread data sharing digitally between the stakeholders, could become useful for Sarawak’s forest industry development as part of the effort to digitise the state’s economy.

The delegation received briefings on overview of the forest policy of Finland, sustainable forest management, sustainable management of acacia plantation and digital tools for forest management given by officials of the ministry.

The digital tools had been a significant concept of forest management in Finland which has a considerable size of smallholdings to support the national forest industry of the northern European country.

The Chief Minister said the Finnish digital expertise could become a common platform of collaboration between Finland and Sarawak that could later be expanded to peat soil studies since both Finland and Sarawak had considerable peat cover.

He told the Finnish minister that any co-operation between Finland and Sarawak should be made on a direct basis with Sarawak state government as authority over forest and land are state matters.

He pointed out that that such co-operation was vital for Sarawak with a view to eventually achieve compliance with global standards on sustainability, in the palm oil industry in particular.

Members of the entourage include Deputy Chief Minister, Datuk Amar Haji Awang Tengah Ali Hassan, State Secretary, Tan Sri Datuk Amar Haji Mohamad Morshidi Bin Haji Abdul Ghani and Assistant Minister of Urban Development and Natural Resource, Datu Haji Len Talif Salleh.

Another team from the delegation was sent to gain insight into “sauna startup” which is basically an informal meeting centre equivalent to Sarawak’s newly set up digital innovation hubs in Kuching and Sarikei.

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