National debt ‘tripled in 6 years’

PNG’s national debt has increased from K8.5 billion in 2012 to K27 billion in 2018 – trebling in six years, Shadow Minister of Finance and Treasury Ian Ling-Stuckey says.
Ling-Stuckey, who is the Kavieng MP, said PNG’s debt interest costs and charges had increased from K452mil in 2012 to K1.9bil in 2018 – a four-fold increase in annual debt service.
“PNG’s debt interest costs in 2018 were larger than all expenditure on health (K1.4bil), law and order (K1.1bil), education (K600mil), transport (K356mil) electricity and power utilities (K136mil),” he said in a statement.
“This is the true cost of the debt and a loss of money to spend on the things that really matter to the people of PNG.
“Expensive and risky foreign commercial and sovereign bond borrowings have increased from zero in 2012 to K3.3bil in 2018, thus exposing PNG to major foreign currency risks.”
Ling-Stuckey said in addition to paying for the largest budget deficits in PNG’s history, PNG now had to resort to new borrowings every year to simply repay the debt costs.
“Including these debt amortisation repayments, PNG’s level of new borrowings in 2018 is at K18 billion,” he said.
“PNG’s new borrowings in 2018 were nearly K2bil more than the total budget expenditure of K16.1bil.
“The O’Neill Government also forgot to get Parliament’s agreement on the high level of borrowings in the 2019 Budget Appropriation Bills.”
Ling-Stuckey said all the figures were found in the PNG Treasury budget papers, with all 2018 figures from the latest PNG Treasury Final Budget Outcome released in March.
“I just set out these facts to highlight the challenges facing the Alternative Government,” he said.
“These massive problems reflect seven years of cumulative economic mismanagement.
“The hole that the O’Neill regime has dug for our people is very deep. It will take many years of work to fill this (financial) hole.
“The Alternative Government has the policies to fix the mess by repairing the budget and re-starting genuine incomes and jobs growth.”