The Cabotage policy was introduced by Mahathir when he was Trade and Industry Minister and Deputy Prime Minister. It came into effect on 1 January 1980.
This policy meant that only Malaysian-owned ships are allowed to engage in domestic shipping between domestic ports in Malaysia and had the effect that foreign ships cannot unload their cargoes directly in other ports and have to go thru designated ports such as Port Klang.
So, it means that ships cannot deliver imported cargoes to Sabah directly and must unload in Port Klang and then another Malaysian-owned ship will deliver the cargo from Port Klang to Sabah adding additional costs.
This is one of the reasons why price of goods in Sabah and Sarawak has always been higher than in Peninsular Malaysia.
Those who benefited most from this policy which limited competition and created monopolies were the peninsular-based shipping companies such as Konsortium Perkapalan which also owns Diperdana Corp (which he bought from Vincent Tan's brother Danny) - where Mahathir's son Mirzan made huge amounts of money.
The ones that suffered were the East Malaysians instead who had to bear with higher price and higher cost of living.
After Najib took over In 2009 there was a partial liberalisation of the policy allowing the carriage of containerised transhipment cargo between certain ports in Peninsula Malaysia and East Malaysia and more recently, in 2012 an exception was made for passenger cruise ships.
Today, after 37 years of Mahathir-induced suffering, Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak finally announces the abolishment of the Cabotage policy effective 1st June 2017.
Pan-Borneo Highway, IPP, increased autonomy for Sabah and Sarawak, and now Cabotage. Najib has undone yet another Mahathir policy that has screwed Malaysians - especially East Malaysians for decades.
Is this done for political reasons? Perhaps.
But like highways and water infrastructure granted by Najib to Kelantan, it is all about fairness and justice to no longer deprive the people in Sabah and Sarawak out of the same rights that peninsular Malaysians have enjoyed for 37 years.
Credit LSS.
Via My Facebook https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10211698773976688&id=1587733405
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http://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2017/05/07/pm-cabotage-policy-in-sabah-scrapped/
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