Provinces need more help: MP

 By ELIZABETH MIAE

CENTRAL agencies of Government need to empower provincial governments with capacity to enable service delivery, a provincial governor said. 

Based on his experience as the West New Britain’s Governor, Sasindran Muthuvel said it was extremely difficult to get attention from the national government through its agencies in terms of funding for service delivery.

He said even when funds are appropriated in the provincial budget there was no guarantee that the provincial government would receive it.

Muthuvel was speaking at the launch of the National Economic and Fiscal Commission’s (NEFC) report titled ‘Review of Provincial Revenues 2004-2012’ in Port Moresby yesterday where he was given the opportunity to discuss the implications of the provincial budgets. 

“As a provincial government, we don’t really have the capacity to analyse various incomes generated by the province,” he said.

He gave an example of the oil palm roads in the province, which received zero support from the national government despite the industry contributing almost K1.2 billion to the country’s gross domestic product and almost K200 million in tax revenue.

Muthuvel  recalled in 2011 the provincial government trialled cigarette and alcohol tax in which 20t was taxed from every bottle 

of beer and 3t from every cigarette purchased.

He said from that alone, the government generated about K4 million which was working well but was told to stop by the Internal Revenue Commission after Parliament made amendments to the Inter-government Relations Act 2009. 

He said the amendments were made in such a way that provincial governments that collected internal tax would not be eligible for the 60% GST from the national government. 

“Why would the national government stop a provincial government from generating almost K4 million to actually promote national government programmes? It could’ve been easy revenue for most provincial governments.”