Abel: State spending less on renewable sector

THE Government has been reliant on the mineral resources for revenue and spent less on the renewable sector, says National Planning and Monitoring Minister Charles Abel.
Abel said most of the focus was on the liquefied natural gas (LNG) project.
“The Government continues to rely heavily on the next large resource project, and you can see a lot of our five year outlook is based on this LNG project,” he said.
Abel made the comment yesterday during the first day of two-day 2016 PNG Update conference themed “Sustaining development in PNG beyond the resources boom”.
“Oil prices have collapsed, and we continue to repeat the mistake of not investing into some of the more broad-based underlying industries that need to be developed,” he said.
“Our Government has to give priority to the fundamentals.
“As we continue to fund health, education, infrastructure and law and order properly, it squeezes the budget.”
He said it tended to squeeze out some of the investments the country should be doing if it had the funds as expected from the LNG project.
He said the Government should be putting more money into agriculture, tourism and other sustainable development.
“This is what we should be doing more,” he said.
He said the focus should now be on continuing sustainable development beyond the resource boom.