The Marape-Rosso Government is committed to creating a more attractive business environment through investments in ease of doing business interventions by the Government and key Government Agencies, says the Minister for International Trade and Investment, Richard Maru.
Minister Maru said this to members of the Government Agencies and the private sector who gathered in Lae city for the 8th Customs Business Consultative Forum under the theme, “Customs Delivering on its Commitment to Efficiency, Security and Prosperity”, hosted by the PNG Customs Service.
“We all know that PNG is not an attractive place to do business right now compared to our competitors and I am very much aware of that. As the Minister responsible for international trade and investment, I want to thank all our Government Agencies and our private sector for hanging in there despite all the challenges that we are facing as a country including highest unemployment, highest law-and-order problems, serious foreign currency issues, national debt of over K60 billion, and depreciating Kina value which have made it very difficult, especially for our private sector.
Our biggest problem in the last 50 years has been this: We have failed to build a strong and robust economy like other countries. After 50 years, PNG’s GDP sits at about US$ 30 billion, Japan’s GDP is over US$ 4 trillion, New Zealand’s GDP is over US$ 252 billion, Singapore’s GDP is over US$ 501 billion, and the Philippines’ GDP is about US$ 437 billion. These countries are one-third our size, except Singapore, and are not endowed with natural resources like our country and yet on average their economy are ten times bigger than ours,” he said.
Minister Maru added that the exciting thing is, it is not all doom and gloom, because PNG have seven new resource projects coming up including Papua LNG, Pasca Gas, P’nyang Gas Project, Wafi-Golpu Mine, Freda Mine, Wildebeest and Namabarope, these resource projects will underpin the economy going forward.
“To create the 1 million jobs as stipulated in our Medium-Term Development Plan 4, we must change our policies, we must downstream process all our resources, we must compete with the rest of the world to bring in foreign direct investments, and the best way to do it is to develop Special Economic Zones (SEZs) as the main driver of future economy growth.
SEZs will be very critical. If a country like the Philippines, which is a one-third our size, can have over 420 SEZs driving their economic growth at the rate of 5% per annum, generating over US$63 billion in export income, and creating over 4 million jobs, we can do it too,” Minister Maru said.