Creativity, innovation key to business development

By JACKLYN SIRIAS
THE country needs innovations to provide business opportunities that can benefit the people, Minister for Trade, Commerce and Industry Wera Mori says.
He was speaking during the Institute of Banking and Business Management’s small to medium enterprise (SME) leadership awards night in Port Moresby on Thursday.
Mori said the only way to involve locals in business was to engage them in the industry they understood the best.
Mori said the Government planned to create 500,000 SMEs before 2030.
“Currently, our small businesses stands at 50,000 (and) the balance of 450,000 must be met by 2030,” he said.
Mori said it meant creating around 40,000 small businesses  annually for the next 12 years. That is quite a task.”
“We have forgotten what has always been our strength in the agriculture industry,” he said.
“People must make use of agriculture so that whatever that is burned from the respective industry must be ploughed back into a primary industry.”
Mori said mines such as Porgera, Lihir, and Ok Tedi would one day close down.
“Our oil reserves at Kutubu is winding down. Then we are depending on the LNG gas,” Mori said.
“Everyone must now ask, what is life after the extractive industries are gone?”
Mori said the government should provide incentives to help entrepreneurs grow their business, and create more businesses opportunities.
“The extractive industries create spinoffs that are only confined to where those projects are, like Kutubu and Porgera,” he said.
“What we need are innovations so that we can provide opportunities that can reach the wider sector of the community. So the initiative to revive plantations will be the only way that we can involve everyone to participate because it is part of the industry that they know best.
“Today, we lose about K600 million to K700 million from plantation phase drops, such as coffee, copra and cocoa.”