The Minister for International Trade and Investment has come out to respond to comments made by the head of the Papua New Guinea (PNG) Institute of National Affairs (INA) on the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) initiative of the government, which stated that SEZs encourage corruption. Minister Richard Maru said that the comments made by the PNG INA Director, Mr. Paul Barker in one of the daily newspapers yesterday, Monday 08th January, was simply misleading. “If the SEZs are encouraging corruption, then why have countries like China, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and t Philippines chosen SEZs as the major driver for sustainable and…
Author: Emmanuel MAIPE
PNG Power Limited (PPL) could have restored full electricity supply on the Ramu grid to the upper Highlands region sooner, had it not been for landowners preventing workers from detecting a recent fault that disrupted power supply to five areas last week. According to the State-owned power company, some of the transmission line towers cannot be remotely accessed on the PNG Power system to locate a fault and therefore, PPL teams must physically access them to find out where a fault might be along the power grid. However, when PPL teams went in to investigate some of those towers, they…
Teams from PNG Power Limited (PPL) are currently working hard replacing High Voltage (HV) transmission lines that were apparently damaged over the weekend and shutting power to Wau in the Morobe province. According to PPL, the work on the lines and poles will take at least a day to fix before power can be restored to the residences, business houses and public institutions in the township. The replacing of the HV lines follows reports of people apparently cutting and stealing the transmission lines, while in another incident, vehicles ran into two separate power poles, affecting power supply along the Zenag…
Fuel consumers can now breathe a sigh of relief with the Independent Consumer and Competitions Commission (ICCC) announcing that the prices for petrol, diesel and kerosene have dropped for the month of January. According to ICCC, the drop in fuel prices will be experienced right throughout the country starting today, Monday 08th January 2024. The Commission said the drop in the prices of all three petroleum products was due to the average decrease in international crude oil prices in the month of December. 2023. The average crude oil price was mainly attributed to the increase supply amid heightened geopolitical tension…
The efforts by Ok Tedi Mining Limited (OTML) put in towards protecting the environment and the communities it operates in, resulted in the mining company exceeding its environmental protection target in 2023. This was revealed just recently in a statement by OTML, stating that it has exceeded its annual sediment dredge target of 10 Million Cubic Meters (Mm3) and its rehabilitation target of 35 hectares for 2023 at its Bige Operations, which is located 125km from the mine site at the Star Mountains of Western province. The Bige Operations dredged 10.3 Mm3 of river sediments and rehabilitated 40 hectares (ha)…
It’s the start of a brand-new year and the Internal Revenue Commission (IRC) is already advising the general taxpayers through a notice that if they wish to engage someone to attend to their taxation matters this year, they should start consulting a registered Tax Agent or the IRC for assistance. Also, any unregistered tax agents are advised to apply to IRC to legally register as a Tax Agent before they can start providing any taxation services to their clients. These services include Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN) Registration, Certificate of Compliance (CoC), Lodgement of Tax Returns, Payment of Tax Liabilities, Objections,…
Over K300million of dividend was finally paid out by Ok Tedi Mining Limited (OTML) to its shareholders recently to close of another year of business for the mining company. OTML said it paid out a final dividend payment of K350million to its shareholders on 28th December 2023, bringing the total dividend to K450million for the year. The Company had declared an initial interim dividend payment of K100million on 26th October citing a positive outlook for a final dividend payment in December 2023. OTML Board Chairman, Jeffrey Innes, thanked employees, contract partners and the mine impacted communities for their support throughout…
The Minister for International Trade and Investment has told his officers and staff of the Department of International Trade and Investment (DITI) that 2024 will be the year of implementation of everything that they have laid the ground works for this year. Speaking at a recent DITI event in the city of Port Moresby, Minister Richard Maru said one of the main things on the agenda is the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) projects. He said the Ministry of International Trade and Investment (MITI), which is still quite new, was created to be the primary driver of economic growth in Papua…
In an effort to get more from the country’s Fisheries Sector, the Ministry of International Trade and Investment (MITI) has pushed for imposing a tax on all unprocessed fish caught in Papua New Guinea (PNG) waters by fishing companies and shipped overseas. Minister for International Trade and Investment, Richard Maru said the good news is that the government supports this initiative by the Ministry. “Through our initiative, we brought parliament to pass a law that by the first of July next year (2024), this country will for the first time introduce a 20% tax on all the fish brought out…
The three national Parliamentary Members of the Gulf province are expected to have an urgent meeting with the prime minister today to go over their issues that they have raised regarding the Social Mapping and Landowner Identification Study (SMLIS) conducted for the Papua LNG (PLNG) Project. The Gulf Governor, Chris Haiveta, said this meet up was already agreed upon last week in another meeting with Prime Minister (PM) James Marape, to hear their side of the story regarding matters relating to no proper identification of landowners of the project areas and other matters. This meeting today with the PM comes…