This study explores the relationship between the total exports and total imports of the food
industry in Sarawak from 1961 through 2007. We examined the sample period of the pre-1997
crisis (1961-1996) and the full sample period (1961-2007) to investigate disparities for pre-
crisis sample. Analysis was carried out using standard econometric procedure and Dynamic
OLS estimation for the annual observations of the two sample period. This study’s major
findings are: (1) long run relationships were detected in the full sample period whereas they
were absent in the pre-crisis period; (2) imbalances in food were found to be weakly sustainable
for the full sample; (3) for every ringgit increase in imports, exports rose by RM0.803 for the
full sample, revealing that imports grew at a rate faster than exports. This finding suggests that
reducing the size of imports may improve imbalances in Sarawak’s food industry