RECENT stories in the New Straits Times on marine-related topics, such as the role of our sea, the plants along our shoreline and overfishing, attracted my attention.
We may have overlooked these issues in the drive to develop other sources of economic growth.
Other related areas in the broader maritime economy include incursion by foreign fishermen into our seas to catch fish, and illegal landings by foreign nationals.
Some areas that get attention once in a while are our development of ports, our shipping industry, and piracy. These are matters of concern which could have been flying under our radar for development planning.
Indeed, the development of our maritime economy has not been examined in great depth for several decades.
This is quite surprising as we were historically part of the greater nusantara, and we refer to our motherland as tanah air, meaning land and water, displaying our region as an archipelagic entity, geographically.
Our geography is our history. When we recollect the role of Melaka in the nation's history, the Malays were rich traders and not the poor peasants that the colonial masters wanted us to believe.
Our maritime economy could easily encompass concerns such as shipping, port development, fishing industry, marine and island tourism, marine life and ecosystem, and issues such as cabotage, piracy, importance of coastal surveillance and enforcement. There may be many more.
Our maritime concern becomes more anchored if we bring up the subject of oil resources in the region. Our petroleum, which is of low sulphur content, fetches a higher premium.
And, our oil industry is based on offshore oil wells, in our exclusive economic zone. From a broader strategic national interest, the list of concerns gets longer.
The role of the Straits of Malacca, which over 100,000 ships ply across annually, and our proximity to the South China Sea — which draws strategic attention from China and the United States — indicate that Malaysia has to view the maritime economy with a fresh look, based on long-term strategic economic, political and diplomatic interests.
Failure to appreciate this strategic link can be tragic. All these have a bearing on our defence and security interests as they relate to our navy and maritime surveillance plans and programmes.
Additionally, our broad orientation as a trading economy, with exports and imports making up about 150 per cent of total output (it was over 200 per cent earlier) as measured by gross domestic product, adds another perspective to the matter.
Almost 90 per cent of world trade is carried as sea cargo and much of this passes through the narrow Straits of Malacca and the contentious South China Sea.
Putting all these matters into one broad caption, namely the Malaysian maritime economy, could send a deep message to the authorities to take a deep dive into a subject of grave importance in the long run.
Unfortunately, our public institutional set-up looks at these subjects in a fragmented and not in a comprehensive way. I think the top leadership and top echelon of the civil service should see these interrelated areas of concern in a coherent policy dimension.
It is high time we had a separate ministry to plan and develop marine resources and industries as a source of growth. This can ensure the industries that develop are in sync with the strategic and long-term interests of the nation and the collective dynamism of the Asean region.
As said earlier, our geography can be our history. Melaka was a centre of trade in the far east, attracting the Arabs and the Europeans, in addition to Chinese and Indian traders, to economic opportunities.
Unfortunately, much of our history was written based on colonial records. Perhaps the history of Melaka was grander than it was, had we relied on records of the Indian, Chinese, Japanese and Javanese traders.
It is much appreciated if the Economic Planning Unit, the Transport, Foreign, Defence, and Energy and Natural Resources ministries, together with the Malaysian Institute of Maritime Affairs and universities that teach oceanography, could jointly examine the subject matters in totality and put them in a long-term strategic perspective.
It may be a new source of wealth creation.
The writer is chairman of Malaysian Institute of Economic Research and Academic Fellow of Universiti Sains Malaysia