Imports to be controlled

 FISHERIES Minister Mao Zeming says the Government has introduced measures to stop the mass inflow of cheaply produced canned fish being dumped in Papua New Guinea.

“PNG has a domestic market that should be supplied by fish from its own waters and welcomes necessary controls for imports instituted,” Zeming said in a paid advertisement.

“For too long there is so much leakage of raw materials in the region that is flooding the markets in Asia and Latin America, pushing the prices of raw materials down.”

He said this was happening because foreign fleets and local boats charted by foreign parent companies were harvesting PNG’s resource and processing elsewhere, thus generating jobs, profits and benefits for their people.

Zeming said he instructed the National Fisheries Authority to ensure the value of fish processed in PNG increased by 2016 onwards as a condition of licence for access to fish in PNG waters. “Despite very strong competition from other tuna processing nations, Papua New Guinea is determined to enhance and widen the opportunity to have more of its fish and that of its Pacific neighbours processed in PNG,” he said.

“The Government’s policy on downstream processing and economic strategy is not new and is very clear.

“PNG does not need to worry about competitiveness of the other processing countries because PNG and other Pacific neighbours are the ones with the tuna resource-so they cannot control the supply. So long as we process our fish here and not supply to raw materials to our competitors outside the Pacific region, more market opportunities will open up.

“I am in raising concern over use of concessional fishing rights linked to processors seeing, not just the fish being shipped out but to subsidize competition but suspected  transfer pricing, non- remittance of proceeds and creativity to avoid tax.”