Govt expects improved revenue flow, says Abel

By HELEN TARAWA
Rising oil prices and hard work done by Internal Revenue Commission (IRC) and PNG Customs Commission will translate into improved revenue flow, says Treasurer Charles Abel.
He told Parliament on Friday that Government was optimistic of collecting most of the forecasted revenue.
Abel was responding to shadow minister for treasury and finance Ian Ling-Stuckey, who raised a series of questions on the budget and the economy.
Abel said the debt stock was in the order of K25 billion, both domestic and foreign. He said the budgeted interest payment in 2017 was K1.6 billion, which puts interest cost on average at about 6.4 per cent.
“A lot of that interest cost is related to domestic financing, treasury bills because they are rather high cost and because they have got this rollover risk,” he said.
“When you talk about loan repayments, as opposed to interest payments, it is the interest payments that lists the K13 billion in terms of revenue and total budget envelope from year to year.
“If you want to bring into question the debt repayment side of it, as opposed to the interest side of it, you come into this accounting question which involves rollover of debt.
“We are aggressively borrowing to invest into this country.”
Abel said that to date, K3 million had been paid into each district in terms of district services improvement programme funding and another K1 million would be paid this week.
Abel said 44 per cent of the recurrent budget had been met because of issues.
He said only 25 per cent of functional grants had been met.
Abel said the bulk of revenue would be collected in the second half of the year.
“We will be explaining that process through the Mid-Year Economic Fiscal Outlook,” he said.
“We’ve had some difficult times and we’re going through the budget exercise in meeting some of those commitments. The IRC and Customs have collected 50 per cent of the budget revenue, but on the dividend side, it’s only 12 per cent.
“We are dealing with some legacy issues as well, things like the superannuation debts and payrise and what not.”