‘Policies need monitoring’

There are a lot of policies to support agriculture and the economy but the issue is proper monitoring, a businessman says.
City Pharmacy Ltd founder Sir Mahesh Patel said farmers needed assistance.
“There are lots of policies, but the lack of monitoring and policing makes them useless,” Sir Mahesh said.
“Apart from freight subsidy, investment in infrastructure will also bring costs down, and improve efficiencies.
“Also, farmers need assistance with better and more modern varieties of seeds.”
CPL’s retail chain Stop & Shop and the CPL Foundation supports about 2,000 farmers in the country.
“I have been and will keep saying that we need to improve infrastructure and transport in the country that is the way forward to support local farmers,” he said.
Sir Mahesh said there needed to be more job creation in the country.
“The state of the economy is flat in Port Moresby, but there is some improvement in the outstations, we need more job creations to fire this up,” he said.
“At CPL, we had a walk-in interview needing some 200 extra staff, but more than 4,000 turned up, I really feel for the thousands missing out.”