In 1989, after chairing a two-year Commission of Inquiry, Justice Barnett described forest management in PNG as being in a state of chaos. He declared that foreign-owned logging companies were being allowed to operate as they pleased as a result of bribery and the corruption of State officials and politicians.
ACT NOW! and Jubilee Australia
Thursday 15 September 2022
Eddie Tanago, Campaign Manager
While we celebrate 47 years of political Independence, we must acknowledge the fact that as a Nation we have failed to fulfil our development aspirations and we should reflect on the reasons why this is so.
Why have our social and economic development outcomes fallen so short of what we dreamed was possible, despite the fact that our Nation is so richly blessed in natural resources?
The answer is that our failures have mainly been caused by successive governments choosing to follow the wrong development model.
There are a lot of important issues for the new Forest Minister, Salio Waipo, to address, especially rampant illegal and unsustainable logging.
Payroll taxes and Goods and Services Tax (GST) make up a large proportion of the government revenue which is used to fund its Service Improvement Programs.
K10 million each year is paid to every District across the country and another K5 million per District goes to Provincial governments. Then there is a further K500,000 for every Local Level government.
Billions of Kina are distributed every year through the Service Improvement Program (SIP) and every Tax Payer in PNG has the right to know how their money is being spent.
Effective action against corruption is essential for economic growth and it should be the number one priority for the new Marape government.
Papua New Guinea’s Constitution is unique as it gives the people rights to be custodians over their land, 95% of which is still under customary control. For thousands of years, over 800 cultures have allowed our land to sustain every generation till the idea of registering customary land was introduced from outside our shores and clouded the real value and importance of that land.
FIGURE 1: Round Log Export Timeline
The aspiration to ban round log exports is now at least 15 years old, but consecutive governments have failed to meet their own deadlines. After putting aside the agenda for over a decade they now say a ban will be imposed in 2025 and the country will move finally to fully downstream processing.
Papua New Guinea’s tropical rainforests have enormous local, national and international importance but are under threat from a variety of sources including commercial logging.
The government has committed to drastically reduce the rate of commercial logging and increase financial returns from downstream processing by ending the export of unprocessed round logs by 2025, but a new research paper by ACT NOW shows there are serious questions over whether this target will be achieved.