Source: Post Courier

The drop in commodity prices is a great lesson for Papua New Guinea which has relied too much on the extractive industries, says Northern Governor Gary Juffa.

“We have been fascinated with gas, gold, oil for so long that we forget that the most fundamental and important aspect of who we are as people is our land,” he said in Lae. “And the current situation forces us to return to our roots. It also forces us to take a sober look at areas we have ignored such as agriculture, tourism and human resources development,” he said.

Mr Juffa said that the Government’s job is to create access opportunities in foreign markets. “If you have an economy that is export-driven, that economy will flourish and grow. PNG has an import-driven agenda that encourages citizens to buy manufactured items, including food stuff, and end up with lifestyle diseases,” he said.

The Northern Governor’s views were shared by Tax Review Committee chairman Sir Nagora Bogan.

Sir Nagora said the current economic situation is partly to do with global prices but it was also to do with the mis-steps of the Government decisions. Sir Nagora has confirmed completing the tax review report and submitted last year unfortunately it couldn’t be implemented because of the macro economic situation PNG is facing at the moment.

“I am not a political person but I believe in speaking the truth,” Sir Nagora said.

He believes that PNG should now take stock of things as 2016 and 2017 will be a hard year but urged not to give up. He is not pessimistic of the years ahead, calling for the need to manage, saying that PNG is too over-dependent on resourcing the extractive sector. He said the price now paid when the gold and oil prices go down signals that PNG does not have an alternative to provide and mitigate that risk. “We don’t have that,’’ he said.

Sir Nagora said the shift now is to look at tourism, forestry and agriculture and how we can pioneer and make inroads into moving these sectors so that we won’t have the same problem faced today because of the over reliant and over dependency on the extractive resources including the LNG.