Bill passed to amend Forestry Act

Parliament yesterday passed a bill to amend the Forestry Act 2019 and enable the Forestry Authority to become a self-financing agency.
Minister Douglas Tomuriesa, who introduced the proposed legislation, told Parliament the bill was to allow PNGFA to obtain self-funding status so that it could implement government priorities, including downstream processing, while expanding national forest plantations and ensuring the industry was properly regulated and managed.
He said the forest industry played a significant role in the national economy.
“The industry contributes to five to seven per cent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP),” Tomuriesa said. “This is very significant given that the combined agriculture, fisheries and forestry share of the GDP has been estimated at 28 per cent.”
He said the industry earned more than K1.3 billion (US$400mil) in foreign exchange.
“The industry continues to pay taxes to the state and provides royalty benefits to resource owners.”
Tomuriesa said the forest industry contributed K400 million annually to the government coffers, of this K300 million came in the form of log export tax of unprocessed round logs collected by PNG Customs Services.
“An additional K100 million comes in the form of other taxes and levies including GST and log export development levy,” he said. “The country over the years has not succeeded in achieving any domestic downstream processing of our logs.”
He said the government aimed to halt the export of unprocessed.