Plans set for K1 billion agricultural industrial park project

PLANNING has begun on the US$330 million (K1 billion) PNG-China Integrated Agriculture Industrial Park projects in Western Highlands and Eastern Highlands, an official says.
Team leader Brian Waii was giving an update on the parks to be built at Korofeigu along the Highlands Highway outside Goroka (130ha) and Hati (Highlands Agricultural College) in the Wahgi Valley on the border of Jiwaka and Western Highlands.
The agreement to develop the project was signed last November between the governments of China and PNG.
Waii said after the signing, his team was into consultation with the governments of Eastern Highlands and Western Highlands, the Department of Agriculture and Livestock and developer China Railway International.
“With China Railway, we’ve already got a conceptual plan in place,” he said.
“We are now at the stage of land transfer to China Railway. We however can’t access the land until we are granted the title so that we can do feasibility studies and a whole range of things including our commercial plan.
“We are talking with the two provincial governments and the agriculture ministry for the land to be transferred to us.”
Waii said the project was unlike any other done in PNG because it was being done on a large scale.
“This is how important this project is to us, the provincial and National governments,” he said.
“We plan to get the land out of the way by the end of this month and we should move on to the feasibility stage.”
Waii said Chinese president Xi Jinping was likely to visit the project site while in the country in November for the Apec Leaders’ Summit.