Yayasan Sabah to provide business platform through SICC

By Olivia Miwil - July 25, 2020 @ 9:47am

Sabah International Convention centre offers state-of-art facility that could facilitate people to do business. - NSTP/ courtesy of Sabah International Convention Centre

KOTA KINABALU: Sabah International Convention Centre (SICC) aims to provide a venue for more business opportunities for the local players.

Owned by Yayasan Sabah Group - a state-sanctioned organisation in Sabah - the newly-completed centre is looking into being a multipurpose facility instead of just for conventions.

The centre chief executive officer Datuk Rosmawati Lasuki said the idea of having the state-of-the-art building is the continuous efforts of Yayasan Sabah to serve the people in the state.

"When Yayasan Sabah started, it placed a lot of focus on providing education for the people of Sabah. Now, there are a lot of educated people and they need a place to do business.

"This centre is supposed to be a centre of excellence, it is for the people to explore any potential (businesses), we provide a venues for them," she said.

Rosmawati said people have misconceptions that SICC was merely for conventions or large-scale events.

Citing their flexible concept of "everyone can do business", she said SICC could also hold performing arts, indoor sports such as mixed martial arts, cooking, and even for small-scale business meetings and products exhibitions for less than five people.

SICC is the largest waterfront purpose-built convention, exhibition and entertainment facility in East Malaysia with a total function space is 153,197sqm.

"At SICC, we are able to offer a lot of space that fulfill the social distancing and have the technology (to speed up) temperature screening for visitors," said Rosmawati.

She said its first major event was in February with a week-long national-level Quran Recital and Memorisation Competition that attracted 10,000 visitors during the closing.

Following a relaxed Movement Control Order, the centre has received bookings from the state government, business fraternity and social groups due to the attractive promotional rates.

Starting yesterday, the centre has also opened its doors to the public for a three-day art exhibition dubbed as #MASKED: Making peace with our limitations that feature 74 artists.

"The exhibition highlights the creative expression of artists related to MCO and the message of the need to look after our environment.

"Apart from that, we also want to inform the public that we are open for business."