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Sports |
Facilitate investors
WITH the present unabated surge in
world commodity prices, PNG is bound to see an influx of
international investors on its shores willing to invest billions
of dollars, particularly in the resource extraction sector.
Currently, there are several proposals before the Government
from various international companies entailing substantial
capital investments ranging from hundreds of million to billions
of dollars to invest in large-scale resources projects.
One of these proposals is the US$10 billion LNG (liquefied
natural gas) project initiated by ExxonMobil and partners which
own licences in gas fields in the Southern Highlands.
Another LNG proposal worth over US$5 billion is from InterOil
and partners, to develop gas from the Elk gas fields in the Gulf
province to supply their LNG plant.
Other similar project proposals are before the Government
involving other sectors like mining, logging, tuna and many
more.
The Government of the day must make it its top priority to
ensure it best facilitates these investment proposals and
therefore giving the investors the level of certainty required
to move quickly to make final investment decisions.
The Government must be proactive and be able to read the
prevalent market conditions and the dynamics at play.
This is critical because PNG is competing with other regional
economies with similar resources and PNG cannot afford to make
the same mistakes over and over again and remain economically
stagnant. PNG needs to progress.
Having said the above, I abhor the manner in which the
Government is handling the issues relating to the mobile phone
market, including the relentless attempts to thwart Digicel from
competing with State-owned Telikom.
The actions of the two young State Ministers who are ferociously
putting up a fight with Digicel could potentially destroy PNG’s
reputation as a safe investment destination while at the same
time, doing injustice to the public and the existing businesses
with unnecessarily high cost of telecommunication.
Cali Cullo
Via email
 
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