KOTA KINABALU – Yayasan Sabah deputy director Datuk Sam Mannan has taken a step back from his earlier claim that the state has benefited from the carbon trade deal, saying the advance payment received was only to cover working costs.
He said Permian Malaysia Sdn Bhd, the company the state has entered a deal with, had only paid RM240,000 in advance to cover a bank guarantee or performance bond, services required from Yayasan Sabah among other miscellaneous costs.
“Since the carbon units have not been sold, the issue of income streams is not applicable yet,” he was reported as saying here today.
He also noted the deal was approved by the Sabah cabinet in 2017, involving 80,000ha of forest logged in Kuamut.
Mannan said this in response to Sabah DAP spokesman on Sabah affairs Chan Foong Hin who had called Mannan to make the deal public after citing Mannan’s claim that the state has already benefited from carbon trading.
Sabah Finance Minister II Datuk Seri Masidi Manjun also said that he was unaware of any payments received on the selling of carbon units in Sabah.
The deal in question is not the controversial Nature Conservation Agreement (NCA), which has already been declared by the state as “legally impotent”, but a new agreement that materialised following over a decade of work.
But a cover of an agreement sighted by The Vibes revealed a “service agreement” dated August 6, 2021, during a press conference in Sandakan on August 16.
The agreement was signed between Permian Malaysia, the company which Mannan identified as a British-based firm, and the Sabah government and Rakyat Berjaya Sdn Bhd, which is a subsidiary of Yayasan Sabah.
It is from this deal that Mannan confirmed that the state has profited from the agreement. – The Vibes, August 23, 2022
