Agriculture and Agro-based Industry Minister Ahmad Shabery Cheek said if the nation continued to import food products, the ringgit would depreciate and the price of imported goods would surge.

He instead suggested using commodities as “leverage” in order to negate the cost of importing food products like rice and meat, in a bid to prevent further slides in the ringgit.

“Just as we buy from them, they also buy from us, like our palm oil,” he told reporters today after attending the Agrobank Business Dialogue 2017: Focus on Food Security and TN50 at Nexus Bangsar here.

For example, Shabery said, during his meeting with Pakistan’s agriculture minister, his counterpart had asked Malaysia to buy their rice.

He said according to the minister, Pakistan produced seven million tonnes of rice but consumed only three million tonnes.

Shabery said Malaysia currently imports around 800,000 tonnes of rice.

He added that Malaysia produced 72% of the rice consumed in the country. The remainder is imported from other countries.

The ministry’s secretary-general Dr Ismail Bakar had earlier revealed that Malaysia’s food imports were recorded at RM38.1 billion between January and October 2016, while exports for the same period were only at RM24.3 billion.

In 2016, Malaysia bought RM5.6 billion worth of meat and dairy products from other countries and produced RM2.5 billion of meat and dairy products locally.

The country imported RM7.6 billion worth of fruits and vegetables compared with exports of RM2.1 billion.

Ismail added that the agriculture sector only contributed 9% or RM96.16 billion of the country’s gross domestic product for 2015. The services sector, on the other hand, contributed the largest chunk at RM568.9 billion, or 54%.