The Regional Development Authorities

On broader scale and in a comprehensive strategy of development in rural regions, several statutory regional development authorities were established to implement the development strategy in resource frontier areas, mainly virgin forest situated in the less-developed parts of Peninsular Malaysia such as in the southeast of Pahang, southeast of Johor, the south of Kelantan and the middle parts of Terengganu. Most RDAs, particularly those related to the development of new towns, were established in the 1970s not long after the NEP was launched.



Apart from the main goals of poverty eradication and the restructuring of society, the RDAs were given the following mandates: to redress economic and structural imbalances between regions; to utilise resource strengths/endowments of less developed states towards national economic development; to strengthen agricultural and industrial development in lagging regions, to redirect new development and growth to less developed regions and finally, to urbanise rural agricultural regions by development of towns in the rural areas.



Three decades after RDAs were established, more than 40 new towns had been developed. Twenty-three new towns were in the Pahang Tenggara Development Authority (DARA) region, twelve in the Johor Tenggara Development Authority (KEJORA) region, five in the Terengganu Tengah Regional Development Authority (KETENGAH) region and one each in the Jengka Regional Development Authority (JENGKA) and the South Kelantan Development Authority (KESEDAR) region. These towns were mainly developed by the RDAs and FELDA. Two RDAs, the Penang Regional Development Authority (PERDA) and the Kedah Regional Development Authority (KEDA) are not involve in new townships development and their main programs are in-situ rural development projects such as improvement of the physical conditions of existing settlements and rural industrialisation.

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