B’ville to focus on revenue growth

Business

ECONOMIC growth to increase revenue will be the focus of the Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG) this year, with 30 per cent of annual Budget committed to that.
The plan is to increase from the K20 million in revenue collected last year, Bougainville Finance Minister Robin Wilson said when explaining Bougainville’s 2018 Budget, which was presented to national Treasurer Charles Abel last week.
“From the agricultural side, looking at increasing the production of cocoa and copra and we are also extending this to looking into fisheries and marine products,” he said.
“We are trying to have a system where we can be able to export directly from Bougainville, instead of exporting from elsewhere.
“For mining, we have also given them an appropriate sum of money for them to deal with several exploration licences that they give to companies to properly regulate and also bring in some money from the sector.”
Wilson said that he still had to give the biggest piece of the cake to the social sector “as we still have to maintain health and education programmes”.
However, with the increase in the Budget for the economic sector, “we are expecting to increase our internal revenue”.
“Internal revenue for Bougainville remains at a mere K20 million, so we hope that with the shift in the budget policy we can increase the internal revenue,” he said.
“The approach that we have taken in Bougainville is that we have pulled all the economic sector departments and told them that we are giving you 30 per cent of the budget.
“We want you to sit down and look at all the economic sector priority projects that are practical for us to pursue and when we give you the money you will know exactly where you will spend it.
“This is for the purpose of bringing in more revenue to Bougainville.”