Provinces and districts biggest winners

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PROVINCES and districts have the biggest slice of the Budget 2023 in the Government’s effort to decentralise budget powers, says Finance and Planning Minister Rainbo Paita.
“We are strengthening provincial and district governments to work with us, unlike before when we’ve held most of the budget at National Planning or the Department of Works,” he said.
“Now we’ve more or less decentralised most of the funding back to provinces and districts to give more power back to them.”
The provincial sector is set to benefit from the majority of the operating budget, receiving K5 billion or 25 per cent of the budget component, an increase in K800 million from Budget 2022.
“From where we sit as a national government working to tick off the main ticket agendas, we also see the need to decentralise the budget to districts and provinces, for them to be able to carry out some of the projects,” Paita said.
“While the Department of Works is working on Connect PNG, the districts are now entrusted to build the district roads to connect back to the main trunk roads, provincial roads and back to the Connect PNG programme so the alignment in the budget has to be there,” he added.
Paita noted that K50 million worth of funding for the census under the administration sector has been allocated for census preparation.
Funding has been allocated to the housing minister to cater for national housing and affordable housing programmes to cater for the increase in population and urban evictions.
“K6 million has been given to the land development programme. Land is a big issue when it comes to development so that allocation under the Public Investment Programme (PIP) for land development will assure any investor that want to work with the Government that there is funding to free up land,” Paita said.
“From last year, you’ll see a decrease in the administration component and increase in provinces and other sectors, so we’re entrusting the departments to work with us when we set those development agendas for our programmes in the PIP budget.” Paita noted that most of the roads in the Connect PNG framework have never been linked in the 47 years of independence, Gulf to Southern Highlands highway and the Port Moresby to Alotau among them.
“Connect PNG is not just about roads; it’s about telecommunications, jetties, districts in maritime provinces where it is difficult to access land markets and so this is still one of the core priorities going forward,” he said.
“We’ve also increased funding in the education space, building new facilities like a standalone university that will train doctors, nurses, medical imaging and providing the specialised workforce.
As Port Moresby General Hospital (PMGH) is overcrowded, Paita said for the next five years the Government planned on allocating funds to build a central hospital with 395 beds that could take the pressure off PMGH so that it would just be a specialist referral hospital.
He noted a significant increase of K150 million for an additional 5,000 police officers to the law and order budget for next year and said the Government would be making it one of its priorities to build its own offices.


Govt targets surplus budget by 2027
William Duma

TREASURER Ian Ling- Stuckey tabled a deficit budget of K4.9 billion for next year in Parliament yesterday.
He said the money plan would deliver a billion-kina reduction in the size of deficit, down from K5.9 billion this year.
Ling-Stuckey said the Government would ensure the figure kept falling until a surplus budget was reached in 2027.
“This is all part of a 13-year plan to get our budget books back into order, to stop building up debt,” he said.
Total expenditure for next year was an increased K24.5 billion and revenue estimated at K19.5 billion.
State Enterprises Minister William Duma described the Budget 2023 as a “balanced and realistic” money plan.