The country’s resource and non- resource sectors continue to present good opportunities for investments especially when major resource projects are coming up in the very near future, which should also see the economy of Papua New Guinea (PNG) growing stronger going forward. That was the assurance given by the Minister for International Trade and Investment Richard Maru, to delegates and investors during the official opening of dialogues for the Pacific Islands Investment Forum (PIIF) at Port Moresby this morning. Minister Maru said the country has eight projects so far that are active in the mining and petroleum sectors with more in in the process of coming into existence in the near future. This he said presents an excellent opportunity for investment in the resource sector. “These resource projects underline or underpin the economy, so Papua New Guinea will continue to be a strong economy going forward,” said Minister Maru. “We have a number of big project that are coming online this year, Papua LNG just announced FEED (Front End Engineering and Design) phase, Wafi Golpu we expect the project agreement to be signed. It will become one of the biggest gold mines in the world. He added that P’nyang will start after the construction phase of the Papua LNG, which may be a five year construction phase for Papua LNG and five year phase for P’nyang. This will mean ten years of construction phase. “The resource projects will underpin our economy and when they all start coming online this year, I see a construction boom in the next for the fifteen years running and when we have construction boom in the experience of the PNG LNG project, our economy will grow every year.” However, the minister said although the resource sector is good for cash flow, it’s not good for employment creation; therefore, the non- resource sector is the sleeping giant when it comes to employment and growing the economy. Maru said it’s the government’s focus to revive the agriculture sector so to create employment and moving into downstream processing, where the country manufacture finished products for domestic consumption and also export. This will done through the government’s Special Economic Zone (SEZ) programs. This also presents more opportunities for investors to tap into it, not only in the SEZ’s but for the energy sector in electricity generation and transmission, banking and financing, logging and fuel production. Maru also pointed out that the government is keen on this and has put in a lot of funding into developing them and get more return on the country’s resources. The minister made the presentation to gain interest from Superannuation fund heads from the pacific who are here for the PIIF dialogue, to consider investing in PNG. This is important because superannuation funds make investments in projects in order to make good dividend each year, which is later paid as interest to their contributing members accounts, on top of their savings.