Forest authority hurt by new money law

By JEFFREY ELAPA
THE Government’s Public Money Management Regularisation Act (PMMRA) of 2018 has “affected and crippled” PNG Forest Authority functions and programmes, Minister for Forest Douglas Tomuriesa said yesterday.
He said in an interview yesterday that the Act had stopped the authority from performing its core functions, including the preparation of the downstream processing programme plan 2020.
Tomuriesa said it had also affected site inspections, an important process to make sure complaints and enforcement were considered.
He said given this scenario, there was an option for illegal practices if inspections were not carried out.
Tomuriesa said that while he did not object to the idea, what was important was working on the budget of the agencies. The 90-10 per cent Government-agency breakup should be worked out from surplus funds and not on total revenue of agencies.
He said with the system in place, a lot of programmes had been affected including plantation, reafforestation, local level government and district infrastructure levies, log export development levies and inspections.
Tomuriesa said those programmes were funded through levies collected and parked in regional funds.
He said the Act placed their organisation in a bad position, as they were unable to carry out any programmes.
The organisation was only given K9 million this year instead of the K30 million it receives annually.