PM: State will not back off despite low prices
The National,Thursday March 10th, 2016
PRIME Minister Peter O’Neill says the Government will not back down on empowering the economy in the face of depressed commodity prices.
O’Neill was yesterday speaking at the Puma Energy’s Napanapa Refinery outside Port Moresby yesterday where he opened four new tanks.
“Our economy grew by 9.2 per cent by last year, it is only because our government has deliberately invested in infrastructure and other key sectors of our economy so that it can continue to provide employment for Papua New Guineans and investors like Puma and many others who invest and have confidence in PNG,” he said.
“We must have confidence in PNG too.
“It is always for our critics to derail what we want to achieve for our nation but we must stay focused.
“Many of our policies are achieving many of the things that we have dreamt in the past.
“Our responsibility as a government is to create an environment that is stable for our investors.
“Our tax regimes, our government policies must be stable so that investors have the confidence.
“Yes, there will be challenges but challenges can be overcome if we continue to work together, and that is the challenge that we have before us.
“Today, we have a situation where the global commodity prices are depressed, not so long ago we had 120 dollars per barrel of oil and today we have around 40 dollars. That is a huge drop meaning that the revenue coming into our country dropped on a similar scale, but that does not mean that we have to stop anything we are doing and wait for the oil prices to go back.
“We must continue on the programmes that we have, we must make sure that our people have employment, we must make sure that food is on the table for our people, we must make sure that our children go to schools, we must make sure our people receive health services and other services that they deserve and that is why investors like Puma and other investors that are not only in the oil and gas sector must be given the confidence that they deserve that PNG has a bright future.”