New NFA head Ilakini eyes reforms to improve organisation

The National Business

JUSTIN Ilakini has been appointed as the managing director for the National Fisheries Authority (NFA) after replacing John Kasu.
Ilakini is an experienced bureaucrat in both the Papua New Guinea and regional fisheries industry.
He served with the NFA for eight years before taking up advisory roles at the Solomon Islands-based Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) in Honiara for over nine years.
While with the FFA, Ilakini worked with Pacific FFA member governments and tuna industry players assisting with regional economic integration and investment facilitation and returned to the NFA in 2019 and brings strong motivation to drive change.
This change will be centred on two main components – organisational and fisheries sector reforms.
The purpose of these reforms is centred on ensuring the NFA as an organisation is best placed to continue to maximise the impact in maintaining the key pillars for growth as outlined in the Fisheries Strategic Plan 2021-2030 which are:

  • Resource sustainability;
  • Maximising socio-economic benefits; and,
  • Maximising revenue.

“At the NFA our key mandated function is to protect and sustainably manage our resource and to ensure it is secured for generations to come, but at the same time we also have a challenge to generate and raise revenue,” Ilakini said.
He said while the functions could have conflicting policy objectives the National Fisheries board would ensure government directives were implemented through appropriate structural changes.
Outlined in his initial 90-day plan are key focus areas that aim to strengthen and expand NFA’s reach into the commercial space, a key agenda backed and strongly supported by the Government.
“We have established a commercial entity that is 100 per cent owned by the NFA,” he said.
Ilakini said the commercial entity called the Fisheries Capital Ltd would be “the engine room for maximising revenue, enabling key infrastructure to help expand our fisheries industry, grow downstream processing, increase local participation and be solely responsible for capitalising the sector with PNG interests at its heart.”