Authority to focus on development

 THE development sector, including health and education, will be main areas to which the Investment Promotion Authority (IPA) will point investors to in the future, managing director Ivan Pomaleu says.

He said the Government was looking at other areas of investment following the end of the PNG LNG project construction phase.

“One of the areas now is to point the investors to the development sector and that’s thinking more in terms of what is it that government has put in place, in terms of its medium to long term planning to stimulate further growth and we’re (IPA) thinking in terms of such things as construction sector in health and education services, in the transport sector, roads and bridges – those development, the growth enablers, those in our view represent key investment opportunities that we could focus investors to,” Pomaleu said. 

“For instance in the construction sector, you would tend to have a very limited number of players in the roads and bridges sectors, the contractors are few. 

“So one of the things that we wanted to try and achieve is to focus interest in those areas.” 

He said IPA’s role going forward was to look at government goals and see where to insert players into the market.

He added that IPA planned to empower its staff to deliver ideas captured in the plan. 

“We’ll try as best as possible to deal with the specific needs and provide conducive working environment for our staff,” Pomaleu said.