Thousands flock to speaker’s summit

The inaugural 2018 Speakers Investment Summit was held from Monday to Tuesday this week at the Parliament House precinct in Port Moresby.
The summit had the theme, ‘Growing a greater Papua New Guinea, infinite opportunities’. It featured speakers from all sectors, both nationally and internationally.
There was also an exhibition of more than 50 businesses that lined up stalls at the porch of Parliament House.
The event attracted more than 1000 people and most Members of Parliament.
The event was hosted by the Investment Promotion Authority (IPA), national Parliament and the Business Council of Papua New Guinea.
Business Council’s Douvari Henao said the event was an initiative of Speaker of Parliament Job Pomat.
Henao said the event was the result of Members of Parliament wanting to know and connect with businesses.
The summit was aimed at, firstly, increasing MPs’ understanding of market issues.
Secondly, many people in the private sector do not know the political processes and the legislative processes so that was their opportunity to meet chairmen of parliamentary committees.
Lastly, many of the exhibitors have products that are geared towards the districts and rural areas. There were a lot of solar products, water pumps, tractors and a helicopter on display.
It was also to promote business-to-business and business-to-government engagements at the district and provincial levels.
“A great feature of the discussions was that they were so bipartisan, the programme was designed by the Speaker to have a State minister and an opposition shadow minister talk on policy issues and as a result we have had some very impressive feedback,” Henao said.
He said the first day of discussions were about transformation ideas, and what happened in other countries, that could happen here. It was about partnerships.
There was a very strong sentiment from businesses and Members of Parliament that there were more opportunities of working together.
The Chinese experience was certainly an area where a lot of members and businesses could see parallels in, in terms of getting that central government focus right.
There were also lessons to be learnt from China in terms of ensuring that important parts of consultations and dialogue were run economic transformation.
Moreover, there was a talk on sustainable development goals. A lot of members were supportive of the idea of integrating the goals locally.
The last day saw about 90 members attending because it was about the legislations or lack thereof that was affecting investments.
“The important thing to note is that there is a massive willingness that development is everyone’s business now and not ust the members of parliament but individuals and business houses,” Henao said.
“Huge credit to the speaker, the prime minister and the opposition leader to bring their key ministerial portfolio holders to come together in discussion.”