Housing-type financing promoted for agriculture

National

AN ADDITIONAL K200 million has been allocated for the home ownership scheme so more Papua New Guineans can buy houses, Prime Minister Peter O’Neill says.
He said more than 4000 people had bought and owned homes from the previous support the Government had provided for the scheme.
“We have been very successful with other programmes that the Government has been doing, like the housing project,” he told the inaugural national agriculture summit in Port Moresby yesterday.
“Today we have over 4000 Papua New Guineans who never had a home, a decent place they call home, now are able to own it because we’ve put this 40-year loan at 4 per cent fixed interest rate.
“We are going to double that effort next year.
“So we have put another K200 million to be able to get more Papua New Guineans to own homes.
“One Papua New Guinean owning a home means five other people living in that house, 4000 X 5, you do that mathematics – and you are talking about a lot of people.
“This is the sort of programme we must do in agriculture.
“Access to cheap financing over many years so that you have a real chance in making sure that, that particular project becomes viable.”
O’Neill said the Government would fund agencies for plantation management.
“You will find over the next few weeks that we will put more money into building more technical capacities,” he said.
“One interesting programme we will be trying out next year is the national plantations management agencies.
“Some of us who are a little bit older would remember that this project used to be very successful all around the country, up in the Highlands, New Guinea Islands, where they were managing cocoa and copra plantations – they have been very successful.
“We had first-time Papua New Guineans going into business.
“Those who had never had any experience in book-keeping, banking for that matter, you had to have an institution like that to support you.”