Fund completes projects

 PAPUA New Guinea will, by the end of this month, boast of 59 successfully-completed projects under the PNG-Australia Incentive Fund, an official said.

Australia’s Deputy High Commissioner to Papua New Guinea, Margaret Adamson said since 2000, Australia had built 

K350 million worth of health and education infrastructure in the country through the fund.  

She was speaking during the official opening of new facilities at Sonoma Adventist College in Kokopo, East New Britain, last Friday.

She said the fund would have 59 incentive fund projects in operation by the end of the month.

“Those projects have only come about because of good ideas on the part of Papua New Guinean institutions such as Sonoma Adventist College where we have seen that partnerships exist and we can together make this difference for our students and communities,” she said.

“Commit funding so that you have a stake in it so that your ideas, leadership and determination is what has brought this about through the arrangement of the incentive fund.”

Adamson said the AusAID programme provided a lot of scholarships for in-country training in PNG, with more than 450 Papua New Guineans receiving scholarships this year to study in the country.

“Here, we witness the combination and capacity building in the health sector through education, as once these people received their health studies, they will return to the communities and help deliver better health outcomes and health services.

“The benefits to the community through this kind of combination, better health and education services is very obvious and this is the space the incentive fund is working in,” she said.