Free trade zone concept good for reducing cost of business: Office

By PETER ESILA
THE free trade zone concept in the long term is good for reducing cost of doing business in the country, an official says.
National Trade Office acting chief trade officer Richard Yakam said the office wanted to look at the export potential of these zones.
Yakam said this during an announcement of a recruitment drive for phase 2 of the Ihu special economic zone project in Kikori, Gulf.
“They (Government) have been talking about free trade zones and special economic zones for a while, and we have not successfully implemented one as yet, and I think the bottom up approach for Ihu special economic zone, let us see how it works, if it can deliver this project successfully,” he said.
“From the trade’s perspective, we will not contribute anything or infrastructure development aspect of it, but towards the end of it, that is where trade comes in and it is very important for our trade policy implementation.”
Yakam said it was one of the office’s key priorities because the cost of doing business in PNG was high.
“We are encouraging downstream processing, we are trying to encourage more exports as well, but the cost of doing business, the cost of production is very high, in Port Moresby, we have power and water cuts every now and then in the last few weeks and that adds cost to business,” he said.
“So I think we need to go into special economic zones, where we can produce, minimise the cost and export more.”
Yakam said this was in line with the National Trade Policy.
The key objective of the policy is to promote sustainable economic growth of PNG through encouraging investment in the renewable sector, encourage downstream processing, import substitution, and export diversification development.