Agriculture to be priority

AGRICULTURE will be the top priority if Pangu Pati forms the government after this year’s general elections, according to leader Sam Basil.
He said that last Saturday when outlining the party’s policies along with Goilala MP William Samb and policy adviser Dulciana Somare-Brash.
“Pangu Pati’s whole idea coming into the 2017 national election is about transforming this country through agriculture,” Basil said.
“We will use every law we can to make sure that we pass budgets from funds raised from non-renewable resources like oil, gas, copper, fisheries and channel it back into agriculture.
“We will make agriculture become the backbone of Papua New Guinea.”
Basil said the economy was based on 80 per cent agriculture before Independence, but this had changed since, with agriculture only making up 20 per cent of the economy.
“We would like to pump that back up again,” he said.
“We would like to put more money into agriculture and increase production.”
Basil said Pangu would pump K2 billion every year into agriculture if it formed Government.
“Half of that will go into coffee and cocoa,” he said.
“We plan to have coffee – having a ministry of its own.
“Coffee Industry Corporation will become a department, and CIC boss will become a department secretary.
“We will make sure that we build the one-million bags (per year) to five million over the next 15 years.
“In doing so, instead of the current K500 million per year from coffee, we will be looking at K2.5 billion over the next 15 to 20 years.”
Basil said Pangu also had good policies relating to downstream processing, law-and-order, judiciary and others.
He said the party would soon be embarking on a nationwide tour to endorse quality candidates who stand out.
Somare-Brash said 2017 would be a different field where the rules of the game had been changed by Government.
“We’re faced with institutional destruction which we’ve probably never faced before in our country,” she said.
“Our political party policies are focused predominantly on sectoral growth.
“We’re looking at agriculture, building institutional capacity, understanding what the local challenges are on a bottom-up approach.”