The Investment Promotion Authority (IPA) of Papua New Guinea (PNG) has condemned the reckless and senseless attacks by opportunists last week that led to the destruction of shops, major supermarkets and warehouses resulting in over a hundred million Kina lost in goods and properties. The IPA Board and Managing Director Mr. Clarence Hoot were deeply concerned as it was a terrible reflection on IPA’s efforts to promote PNG as a preferred investment destination. “One of our key setbacks continues to be the law and order concerns. Even though such problems are common throughout the world, and occur just occasionally, security is one of the costs that investors unfortunately have to incur as part of their operational costs to ensure that their businesses are protected and secured.” “The IPA would like to convey its utmost regret and sympathies to the companies affected and at the same time assure you that we will work with you in terms of compliance requirements if required to ease some of the pain,” said the Managing Director. He added that with the recent incident, it will take a lot of effort and resources to rebuild the eroded investor confidence built over time and especially, on the eve of the country’s next economic boom. The losses unexpectedly forced upon business by way of lost stocks from the looting doubled with the huge costs of rebuilding burnt down shopping properties and warehouses, would be in millions of Kina and something that could have easily been avoided. Mr. Hoot also said that large numbers of PNG citizens have been forced into unemployment and there will be huge losses of revenue, both for the affected companies and the government from various taxes which will be lost. Meanwhile, the IPA also fell victim to the looting and arson where its rented warehouses at Konedobu were burnt with some records totally destroyed last Wednesday evening. A fire truck was onsite and managed to contain the fire from spreading and completely burning all the files. They were able to save the files which were stored in compactus shelves. However, Mr. Hoot has assured the business community and government that the IPA’s entity records are safely stored on cloud and files kept in the warehouses were hard copies of business information that are currently available on its online registry system. Business entities that have any issues are urged to contact the Registrar of Companies (ROC) for assistance.