Kulang hits excessive spending on roads in nation’s capital

 By SHIRLYN BELDEN 

THE government’s commitment of K400 million for roads in the National Capital District (NCD) is excess spending outside of budget expenditure, an opposition MP says.

Kundiawa-Gembogl MP Tobias Kulang said such overspending would later 

affect the country and people.

He said only K100 million was budgeted for NCD roads and not K400 million.

Kulang said with the K2.5 billion deficit and the overcommitment of K300 million for NCD roads the government was placing further stress on the budget. 

“I can assure the country that the K400 million will bloat to K1 billion in contractual variations given the current trend with other contracts,” he said. 

“This is sure to push the 2013 national deficit to more than K3 billion or around 33 % of the debt to Gross Domestic Product ratio which is bad for a developing economy like PNG and a course of concern for all Papua New Guineans.” 

During the announcement of the NCD road project last week, Prime Minister Peter O’Neill did not say where the money would be drawn from but said the plan was to prepare the city for the 2015 Pacific Games and 

the 2018 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) meeting.