LNG set to bring in K8b annually

THE PNG liquefied natural gas (LNG) project will help the country develop an annual budget of around K8 billion, National Planning and Monitoring Minister and Pomio MP Paul Tiensten said.
Tiensten said for that reason, the project had been of great importance to the development of the country.
The project, he said, would deliver three to four times the current annual budget and would help transform the landscape of the country.
He said the economy today had been one sided and 80% of the people were liabilities.
Tiensten said it was the duty of the government to transform these liabilities and make them productive and resourceful.
The government has to target them and open up the missing links to development.
The budget, Tiensten said, had already been aligned with priorities in the medium term development plan  2011-15 and the PNG strategic development plan (PNGDSP) 2010-30.
National Planning and Monitoring secretary Joseph Lelang, in stressing Tiensten’s comments, stated that the two plans were policies and results-oriented.
Lelang said the plans had placed a lot of emphasis on accountability, transparency and was focused on areas that were still least developed.
He said PNG lagged behind other middle-income countries and had been without long-term planning compared with countries like Malaysia and Botswana.
Lelang highlighted that there was now a need for the country to bring up its gross domestic produce (GDP) per capita up.
He said the only two things that had been hindering the development process were been disjointed planning and lack of finance.
Lelang affirmed that with the PNGDSP, the GDP per capita would be quadrupled.
However, he added that the state of the country’s development could be based on the human development index (HDI) comparison alone, because other factors like basic infrastructure and services on the ground also needed to be considered.
Lelang said with the two plans, PNG would become a middle income country by 2030 with an 8.4% sustained growth over 20 years that would result in immense economic benefits.