O’Neill talks project benefits

 PRIME Minister Peter O’Neill says Papua New Guinea will be looking to a wave of new resource projects to help the country develop an all-important value-added downstream processing industry.

He told the global publishing, research and consultancy firm Oxford Business Group (OBG) in a wide-ranging interview that key projects, led by the Total-InterOil joint venture which will see the Elk-Antelope gas field developed, represented an “exciting” follow-on from the “outstanding success” of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) initiative.

“This project is even larger on paper than the first PNG LNG project and could provide the basis for a thriving petrochemical industry in the future as the country diversifies its economic base in the attempt to create new jobs for Papua New Guineans,” he said.

The full interview with O’Neill will appear in The Report: Papua New Guinea 2015, OBG’s forthcoming guide to the country’s economic activity and investment opportunities. 

O’Neill acknowledged that independence and being “rapidly catapulted into modernity” had brought challenges for PNG, led by the rising expectations of its people, and, most recently, falling global oil prices, but said the country had “come a long way” in the past four decades. 

“Introducing universal education and health care, for example, sends a clear message about the government’s commitment to strengthening the 

physical and moral foundations of our country, as does rebuilding some of the infrastructures that have been in decline for so many years now,” he told OBG.

Papua New Guinea was already beginning to benefit from the LNG project, with revenues now trickling into the system, O’Neill added, although 

poor management in the past meant the country needed “at least five or six years” of focusing on core polices to reach its millennium development goals.

 “We will have the chance to address some of the most pressing issues for our socio-economic development, including better distribution of wealth,” he said. 

The Report: Papua New Guinea 2015 will be a vital guide to the many facets of the country, including its macroeconomics, infrastructure, banking and other sectoral developments.