Spotted on the PNG Mine Watch blog

Many commentators are talking excitedly about the unprecedented riches that will come from Papua New Guinea’s resource boom. Phil Mercer writing for Voice of America (see below) is just the latest.

But who is REALLY going to reap the benefits from Papua New Guinea’s oil, gas, gold and silver?

Papua New Guinea is chasing a development dream based on a failed, foreign, neo-liberal economic model. Along the way it is loosing its sense of family and is drifting away from what once really mattered - Papua New Guinea is letting its children down.

While vast, foreign owned, extractive industries rip out our forests, gold, silver, oil and gas, common preventable illnesses claim hundreds of lives every week and none are more vulnerable than the young. 

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins San Frontières (MSF) has published a new report, Hidden and Neglected: The medical and emotional needs of survivors of family and sexual violence in Papua New Guinea, which highlights the urgent, unmet medical and emotional needs of survivors of family and sexual violence in PNG. The report recommends concrete action in order to meet these needs.

Radio Australia reports on community opposition to the Pacific Marine Industrial Zone:

Bougainville President, John Momis, has gone on Radio Australia to declare his support for plans by the Chinese to build a huge Special Economic Zone on Papua New Guinea's Bougainville island.


Special Economic Zones are fenced enclaves where foreign businesses are given special incentives including tax free status to set up manufacturing industries. SEZs have been heavily criticized in other country's for promoting low wages, poor health and safety standards and environmental damage.

Thomas Webster, Director of the National Research Institute 

Unfortunately, there is a cancer that has grown so fast in our society that threatens the very existence of PNG and will make it difficult if not impossible to achieve our dreams, if we do not take any action now.

That cancer is CORRUPTION.

The Hidden Valley gold and silver mine in Papua New Guinea has polluted the Watut river with acid forming rocks and soils. The increased sediment flows in the river have impacted the lives of thousands of people living downstream of the mine. Gardens have been flooded and destroyed, incomes from alluvial mining have plummeted, fish and other aquatic life, an important food source for local people, has been killed.

But there is no legal sanction for the mining company, jointly owned by Harmony Gold and Newcrest Mining. 

9 June, 2011

Operating under a cloak of secrecy, the International Finance Corporation has been busy developing laws to allow Special Economic Zone laws in Papua New Guinea, while failing to answer questions from civil society about the project.

This secrecy contradicts IFC claims that it is committed to transparency, accountability and sharing information 'to strengthen public trust'.

The International Finance Corporation, a division of the World Bank, has failed to provide details about its development of Special Economic Zone laws for Papua New Guinea.

Community advocacy organisation ACT NOW! had asked the IFC office in Papua New Guinea for further details about the development of the SEZ laws but its questions have not been answered. This is despite the IFC claiming it is committed to transparency and accountability and sharing information 'to strengthen public trust'. 

Reporter Stephanie Elizah says a team of Chinese investors who have been visiting Bouginville are pushing the Autonomous Region's government to allow the establishment of Special Economic Zones.

SEZs are tax free enclaves where businesses are also exempted from normal labour, immigration and environmental laws.

The Chinese government is currently negotiating a loan with the PNG government to build the infrastructure for PNG's first SEZ, the Pacific Marine Industrial Zone, in Madang.