By PMIZ Watcher

While government Ministers are pressing ahead with plans for the controversial Pacific Marine Industrial Zone, despite considerable opposition from local communities, official documents show there is complete confusion about how much money the project will cost.

The government says the PMIZ will incorporate up to 10 tuna processing factories that will employ 30,000 people, but it seems the government has no idea how much public money will need to be invested in the project. The figures quoted in official government documents range from as much as US$985 to as little as US$160.

Even within single documents, wildly different figures are being quoted. 

The official 15-page Notification of Preparatory Works, prepared by the Department of Commerce and Industry in November 2009, begins by saying (on page 4) the PMIZ project will cost US$985. But on the very next page this figure has been more than halved to K985 million (@ US$394) as the quoted currency has changed from US dollars to PNG Kina. That could be a simple, but rather obvious, mistake but, in the 39-page Environmental Impact Statement prepared by DCI in June 2010, the figure quoted is again completely different, K452 million (about US$160 m). 

There is no explanation in the EIS of how the costs have suddenly been reduced by as much as over 80% and the detailed description of the proposed facility and the works to be undertaken are identical to those in the earlier Notification of Preparatory Works. Both documents are published under the name of Anton Kulit, Secretary of the Department of Commerce and Industry.

Trade and Industry Minister, Gabriel Kapris, says he hopes shortly to be traveling to China to sign off on a US$71 million loan from the Chinese government that will pay for some of the basic infrastructure within the PMIZ.

But at a community meeting arranged last Friday by the Attorney General, Arnold Amet, neither Kapris or Amet could answer questions about where K25 million released by the government in 2008 for the PMIZ or K44 million from the 2010 budget has disappeared to.

Local people living on and around the PMIZ site are unimpressed by the fact the loan from China is a tied loan which means that at least 70% of the $71 million will have to be spent in China on Chinese goods and services, rather than supporting local companies to do fencing, roading, drainage and other construction works. 

Local people are also angered that under the terms of the loan it is expected Chinese companies will be allowed to import Chinese labour for the construction work. Under a similar agreement signed by the Prime Minister in 2006, the Ramu nickel mine was accused of bringing in large numbers of Chinese prisoners as slave labour to work on the mine construction.