ENB lacks initiative, says leader

EAST New Britain still lacks initiatives to explore economic benefits of downstream processing local primary products, says a former parliamentarian.
Former ENB premier member for Gazelle, Sinai Brown who is also a businessman said the province still lacked such vital initiatives.
“ENB is not doing anything in downstream processing, we are not serious about business.
“Business brings in revenue and opportunities and we have all the resources available.
“We need to think big and create millionaires from people of ENB so more jobs could be created.”
Brown gave an example of a locally-owned coconut virgin oil project in Rabaul district that was utilising coconuts to produce oil.
The Rabaul project sold its first oil products on the open market last November.
Brown said this was the way forward and other districts must take such initiatives and explore economic options of downstream processing cocoa, copra and other crops.
“As the tourism hotspot and having received tourism funding, I still believe we are not doing it right,” he said. He said there must be a planning team doing exactly that so tourism could be viable.
Brown said only through downstream processing these raw materials, farmers could be provided real incentives and convinced to go back to their blocks, knowing that they would also own the processing facilities.
Brown also believes that ENB has started in the wrong way with tourism initiatives and there were better ways to do things.
“As the tourism hotspot and having received tourism funding, I still believe we are not doing it right,” he said.
He said there must be a planning team doing exactly that so tourism could be viable.