Country’s revenue small: Maru

PAPUA New Guinea’s current economy is too small and unable to generate sufficient internal revenue to fund the needs of its population, National Planning and Monitoring Minister Richard Maru says.
Speaking on the government’s medium-term development plan three (MTDP III) 2018-2022 in Parliament yesterday, Maru said the country’s population had quadrupled since independence and continued to grow at an alarming rate of 3.1 per cent per annum.”
Maru said the country’s reliance on the non-renewable sectors had been the country’s biggest policy mistake since independence.
“PNG will continue to struggle to meet the requirements of our population unless we grow the internal revenue significantly and also succeeded in reducing the population growth to a more manageable and sustainable level.”
He said because of this, the first key areas in the government’s MTDP III was increased revenue and wealth creation.
“We must generate more revenue with broadened economic activities and wealth creation which benefitted our people,” he said.
“This will be achieved through the seven economic growth goals as set out in the MTDP III.”
He said one of the goals was to increase export of major agricultural commodities, fisheries products, processed timber, manufacturing and minerals and reducing imports of food items like rice, dairy, fresh produce and meat.
“We are looking at increasing revenue from national and provincial tax and non-tax collections and dividends by 40 per cent from K10.98 billion to K16.3 billion and creating more employment and economic opportunities for our youth and build the capacity of productive workforce,” Maru said.
He said the other economic objective was to increase bankable land for productive utilisation to unlock its economic potential and engage landowners in the formal market.