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Riches in our land
Prosperity prospects for PNG rests in how the country frees up customary land for development purposes. FRANK KOLMA writes.

TONY Bomar Obukai put his first coffee tree down in 1983 on a 18 hectare plot of his traditional land near Minj town in the Western Highlands Province.
He did this while serving as a Correctional Institutions Services officer.
In 1988 Obukai retired from the Correctional Institutions Services after two full decades of faithful service.
Since then the Taukanim clansman of the Konumbka tribe in Minj, Western Highlands Province, has turned fully to his coffee plantation to cater for his family.
In 1993 he applied for and after surveys over his 18 hectare plot, Obukai was given a title over his land.
Over the years he noticed that help was not always forth coming from family and friends. He saw that one person could not do it all.
"I saw that the plantation was getting run down as I worked," he said at the weekend.
"I had no capital to kill weeds or for fertilizer.
"I am 64 years of age. My strength is gone."
Help came from an unexpected source. He heard that a company called Pacific Arabica Coffee was entering into joint venture arrangements with willing applicants to rehabilitate coffee plantations.
The important precondition was that the plantation owner(s) had to have a title over the land.
Armed with his title, Mr Obukai, applied.
Some twenty kilometers distant west of Obukai's plantation former councilor 45 year old Bare Aimbal, a Sikai tribesman of Kudjip faced a far more difficult proposition.
The bush had virtually reclaimed all 65 hectares of his former Komne Coffee Plantation.
The plantation, by the Wahgi River, had been managed formerly by a management company and later by Wahgi Mek Plantations. There had been rich pickings for Aimbal and his tribesman but after eight years of neglect reclaiming the plantation seemed an impossible task.
Fortunately, Aimbal had a secure title over his plantation.
He also applied when he heard of the plantation rehabilitation scheme.
Obukai and Aimbal's applications were successful.
Today Obukai's coffee berries are so thick and plentiful they are bending the trees almost down to the ground.
Aimbal's plantation, now named after himself, has been cleared completely. Old trees have been pruned and a nursery has been established within the plantation to provide seedlings.
Theirs are among twenty disused and run down plantations throughout the Western Highlands which have been totally rehabilitated and are facing their first full crop by 2008.
Over 800 hectares of coffee have been recovered under the scheme.
By the estimate of Wan Tindipa, a field manager of one of the management companies a further 2,000 hectares of coffee plantation are yet to be recovered in the Western Highlands alone.
Under the scheme landowners who have plots of land or planted areas which have gone into disuse are required to survey their land and get titles over them.
Following this they are required to register a company which would then go into a joint venture arrangement with a management company.
Ownership is split 49 per cent title holder and 51 per cent management company. The management company pays for all improvement and rehabilitation costs upfront.
The contract is good for five years.
Under the scheme 20 plantations have already been recovered in the Western Highlands. It is expected a further 25 to 30 plantations are currently being looked at for rehabilitation.
The plan is to plant or recover 1,000 hectares per year. In the first year that target has been achieved with 1,200 hectares recovered or planted so far.
It is an ambitious plan spurred to fruition by the Western Highlands Provincial Government.
It is a burning and almost personal agenda that Governor Paias Wingti has been pursuing for a long time.
By his estimation every person in PNG is a wealthy man on the basis of land ownership alone.
"If land were valued, every person in this country would easily be a rich man," he likes to say.
It is easy to see why.
Papua New Guinea's total land area is some 460,000 square kilometers. Divided equally, each of Papua New Guinea's 5.2 million people would own sufficient land to put a small plantation on it with land to spare for a home and food gardens.
Unfortunately, 97 per cent of the land in the country is valueless because it remains under customary land ownership.
As long as the land remains under customary ownership there is no value for them. They cannot be transacted, transferred or mortgaged under modern financial arrangements.
Mr Wingti's administration is advancing a scheme presently to have voluntary registration of land.
With elections around the corner, it is a tremendous risk and Mr Wingti, more than anybody else, knows it.
It was the land mobilization issue which put paid to a robust political career in 1997 when he was voted out of office along with the other strong proponent of land registration, Sir Julius Chan.
Still Mr Wingti is convinced that any prosperity prospects for PNG rests in how the country frees up customary land for development purposes.
"I am asking for people to volunteer to register their land," he said last week. "This is not compulsory. Only those people who want to can volunteer to enter the scheme.
"We can all sit on our land until it claims our body or we can add value to our land.
"We can add value by surveying the land and getting a title over it. The population is growing but the land is not.
"Every Papua New Guinean who has land should convert it into equity. He can then use the land (equity) as his contribution to a business venture with investors who have management experience and the finance.
Mr Wingti has started with the rehabilitation of old plantations and the response from the community is so positive and the results so encouraging that the Coffee Industry Board at its last meeting raised the issue and commended the Western Highlands Government for a great job.
Getting the people to venture out and register their land has been one giant hurdle.
The other is getting them to now stop interfering with the management of their investment.
"We must have a mental rehabilitation of the farmer as well as rehabilitation of his physical farm," Mr Wingti says.
"Before he can register his land and enter the scheme, he must accept that he can not interfere in the management of his farm.
"Let him collect his director's fees and his dividends and stick his fingers out of the day to day running of the business.
"He must accept that he cannot go running to the company each time he has social obligations. We have to stop the big man ego mentality and allow good management to run our business. Only then will we succeed. Management is the key."
Under the scheme 50 per cent of all profits is to be reinvested in blue chip stocks to protect farmers against periods of low prices.
"Let him collect his director's fees monthly and his dividends and stick his fingers out of the day to day running of the business.
"He must accept that he cannot go running to the company each time he has social obligations. We have to stop the big man ego mentality and allow good management to run our business. Only then will we succeed. If we interfere with management, our business will flop.
"You can have land. You can have money but it will not work unless there is good and competent management with a proven track record."
Under the scheme 50 per cent of all profits will be reinvested in blue chip stock to protect farmers against periods of low prices.
The other 50 per cent is to be split between the landowner and the management company.
Mr Wingti said, blue chip stocks are good because they will return consistent dividends, there will be growth in the value of shares and they are easy to liquidate (cash) in the event of low coffee prices.
The scheme has immediately increased employment by about 300 people and is bound to increase.
At the same time it has generated some excitement in rural economies.
Mr Wingti has a dream that were this model to be applied nationally, the agricultural output of PNG would be doubled within three years.
And where the model to be consistently applied, progress and prosperity would result as a result of more and more land coming into the financial scheme of things.
He wants to see the model duplicated with all tree crops such as cocoa and coconut plantations most of which are old and run down.
In the Western Highlands a similar scheme is being hatched to produce and market vegetables. Good managers are being sought to take charge of the vegetable production and marketing scheme.
He likes to say: "Our future is in our land. Our wealth is in our land. The difference is in our heads."