TWO institutions pivotal to Sarawak's hoped-for economic transformation recently commemorated their fifth anniversaries.

They are Petroleum Sarawak Bhd (Petros), the state-owned oil and gas corporation, and the Development Bank of Sarawak (DBoS).

Both Petros and DBoS were incorporated in 2017, not coincidentally also the year that Sarawak premier Tan Sri Abang Johari Openg took office.

After some earlier disquiet on the part of Petronas over Petros' establishment and, in particular, over the state's move to collect sales tax from the national oil corporation, both outfits seem to have settled into jointly productive collaborations. 

Speaking at its anniversary gathering, Petros chairman Tan Sri Hamid Bugo said its first venture was the acquisition of the domestic gas assets of Petronas Gas Bhd and Sarawak Gas Distribution Sdn Bhd in 2020.

It has since signed a Production Sharing Contract (PSC) and Joint-Operating Agreement (JOA) with Petronas as well as another PSC and JOA between Petronas Carigali Sdn Bhd and Petroleum Sarawak Exploration and Production Sdn Bhd, a wholly-owned Petros subsidiary.

Petros has also agreed with Petronas to take a 45 per cent equity in an offshore block near Miri.

In short, Sarawak is working towards becoming a serious and active player in harnessing its hydrocarbon resources, not content with just being a bystander passively collecting five per cent royalties.

The state's oil and gas aspirations are but one pillar in an ambitious project by Abang Johari to transform the Sarawak economy.

The other main pillar is leveraging a new financing model through DBoS to spearhead the state's infrastructure development, not just physically but virtually by way of a state-wide digitalisation push.

To date, DBoS has already disbursed nearly RM10 billion to expand Sarawak's coastal road, water-supply and rural electrification networks to reach nearly 100 per cent of the state's population before the end of the decade.

Through various debt instruments, including loan syndications, the hope is to create a multiplier effect by stretching Sarawak's financial reserves as far as they can.

At DBoS' anniversary celebration, Abang Johari promised the next step would be tabling a proposal to set up Sarawak's own sovereign wealth fund at this month's Sarawak Assembly sitting.

The transformative idea seems to be that all these government initiatives will facilitate new investments to generate an annual eight per cent growth in the state's economy so that it will double in size to just shy of RM300 billion by 2030.

The question is whether all these eye-catching targets are realistic. Optimists will naturally say it is better to aim high even if actual achievements fall short of the targets.

A particular concern is perhaps the seeming over-reliance on publicly driven investments and economic initiatives. Largely absent so far are initiatives to tap the participation of the local private sector in order to inject greater dynamism into the overall transformation agenda.

That said, the agenda fits well into a widely shared and popular sentiment that Sarawak needs to take control of its own destiny instead of leaving it largely to the goodwill of the federal government.

It is felt that for too long Sarawak has been treated by Putrajaya as just one of 13 states and its (and Sabah's) different political history and both states' geographical circumstances posing unique development challenges, ignored.

Such local sentiments, however, need to be differentiated from a parallel political trend which seeks to emphasise, even accentuate, Sarawak's separate identity.

The former sentiments speak to easily-understood aspirations for Sarawak's development to be "on a par" with the peninsula and are therefore reasonable and legitimate.

The latter is nativist and therefore unhelpful, even dangerous.

Besides, as former federal minister Tan Sri Effendi Norwawi recently noted to this writer, Abang Johari's economic gameplan is particularly laudable because it seeks to leverage what rightly belongs to Sarawak in the first place.

The writer views developments in the nation, region and wider world from his vantage point in Kuching