Sarawak is looking into ways to attract more foreigners to take up Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H) in the state.

Minister of Local Government and Housing Datuk Dr Sim Kui Hian said a lab for Sarawak-MM2H was being held to see how the state could have a policy that is indeed friendly.

The lab was held as it had been noticed over the years that people who took up MM2H for Sarawak was not that many.

He said statistics showed that the number of people taking up Sarawak-MM2H had increased from 48 in 2006 to only 1,064 in 2018 although people could take up the Sarawak-MM2H but could live anywhere in Malaysia.

"The lab comes about after the Sarawak Housing Real Estate and Developers Association (Sheda) brought up the issue during a courtesy call to the chief minister last year.

"As a result of that meeting, we proposed a lab involving the relevant agencies, and today 18 agencies are involved," he told a press conference after the lab launching ceremony.

The lab was organised by the Ministry of Local Government and Housing through the Housing Development Corporation (HDC) in collaboration with the Ministry of Tourism, Arts, Culture, Youths and Sports.

Dr Sim said the 18 agencies were brought together to give their ideas to make it more streamlined and up-to-date; to the expectation of the people now and in the next five to 10 years.

He said they had brought everybody around so that they could see how to have a policy for Sarawak-MM2H and to make sure that the Sarawak government's policy was indeed friendly.

"We want to promote Sarawak-MM2H aggressively because it can play an important role, not just in terms of housing, but also in terms of investment," he said.

He said people from the United Kingdom now top the number of participants for the Sarawak-MM2H with 212, followed by participants from China (169) and Taiwan (148).