Monday, June 17, 2019

Marape’s dream



Posted on The National

PRIME Minister James Marape is getting up and close with Papua New Guineans by sending messages through social media – Facebook.
He highlighted the target of being economically self-sufficient.
Eighteen days after assuming office as the chief executive officer of the country, he preferred to make off-the-cuff statements which were consistent and coherent with the views of many of his compatriots serving in Parliament with him and many outside.
“Some public servants and other politicians may find offensive or unachievable and that’s your mindset, but I have elevated the level of imagination to the highest any leader can dream of for his country and I am willing to travel that road.
“Dreams are free, I have dreamt it, but work of reconstruction must start now.”
On his page, he wrote: “The nation is blessed with minerals, oil and gas, forestry, agriculture potentials, marine and aquaculture potentials, culture and tourism, water, our strategic location in between eastern economies and western economies and many other intrinsic God-given resources we have in this motherland.
The manner of harvest of these resources under better term will be my journey and story.
This journey hopefully will lead our country to the destination our children deserve.
“The destination in 2030 should be a nation in which people are economically self-sufficient, where best medicine and medical practices are available to all our people, where every children have equal opportunities in education and employment, where police and law and justice sector are working firmly and fairly and our girls and mothers and everyone is safe always, where religious freedom is abound, where digital innovations drive our education, medication and economy, all parts of our country are connected by top-class public infrastructures like roads, ports and airports.
“All these and many more are achievable if I and all who are with me in public service today, put forth collective efforts and stay the course.
“To get there, the following are few things off my head I am putting forward that we intend to do, and I require all of you, who want to lead public service organisations under my watch, to dissect and advise me on your sector strategies going forward from 2020 to 2030.
I have proposed a two-pronged approach, hence I have divided the cabinet into two inter-working sectors, the economic and social sectors intervention.
Economic sector interventions
“Some key benchmarks the Treasurer (Sam Basil) and I will co-lead as we seek to reconstruct our economy for the better.
Key economic benchmarks and tasks to undertake includes:
  • Re-assessment of the 2019 budget and deliver state of economy statistics to ensure our budget for the rest of 2019 and going forward is anchored on solid achievable numbers;
  • make redundant lesser priority areas in budget, including taking control of salary overrun and office rental expenditures;
  • stop non-economic stimulant programmes, including loans to projects of insignificance;
  • ramp up access to international grant facilities already open to PNG like the EUs and other global grants available as well as drawing down on productive loans already secured;
  • do a forensic audit into all levels of companies operating in the country to ensure they are all tax and fees compliant;
  • all resource projects coming up for reviews to be negotiated with the view to gain now for our country with no more concessions, tax deductions or wavering of fees etc; and,
  • Promulgation of policies and legislations to ensure downstream processing of our natural resources be given highest order of priority and all resources companies in all sectors that want to participate in harvest of our resources must come up with clearer and quicker ways to do downstream processing. Gone are the days when someone was telling us you can’t do gold bullion in the country or you can’t process timber in the country or we can’t have petro chemical industries in the country, or we can’t grow rice and cattle in the country. (These) are some examples of adding value to our resources.

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