Papua New Guinea will not be dependent on Australia in 10 years, new PM says

By Kate Lyons and Helen Davidson - The Guardian

Papua New Guinea will be free of its dependence on Australian aid within a decade, the new prime minister, James Marape, has said in Sydney.

He said the first 44 years of PNG as a modern nation had been “filled with so many wasted opportunities and failures”, and pledged “regime shifts” in the resource industry to bring more wealth to the people.

Marape made the comments on Thursday in an address to the Lowy Institute as part of his official visit to Australia.

“We welcome every support Australia can give, but in 10 years’ time I want to assist Australia helping the rest of the Pacific,” he said. “We want to be participating with Australia looking after smaller island nations.”

In 2019-20, Australia will give an estimated $607.5m to PNG in development assistance.

Marape was recently appointed as prime minister of the Pacific nation after several months of political chaos which resulted in the ousting of his predecessor, Peter O’Neill, whose tenure was marked by numerous scandals including the controversial UBS deal.

Marape spoke of his dreams for PNG to become the “richest black Christian nation on earth”, and welcomed Australia’s commitment to infrastructure support and social partnerships over the nation’s history.

“But I don’t envisage this type of aid donor-recipient relationship to last,” he told the sold-out event, which the head of the Lowy Institute, Michael Fullilove, said had drawn more media interest than any event since the institute hosted Boris Johnson in 2017.

“We will move from an introduced culture of dependency and complacency, where we rely on overseas aid and inward investment alone, to one where we become a vibrant economic powerhouse and are totally economically independent by expansion and diversification of our economic base.”

Marape said PNG had to tweak its resource laws and institutions to bring its share of taxes, equity and royalties to above 50%. Major resource projects have routinely been accused of bringing wealth inequality and sparking major disputes.

“[O]ur people demand change of course for the better because what we have done thus far as a nation has been inequitable and disproportionate to our natural resource extraction.”

Go to this link for more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/26/papua-new-guinea-will-not-be-dependent-on-australia-in-10-years-new-pm-says?CMP=share_btn_fb&fbclid=IwAR2ibgcm4HFG8GGF0jFZZsOyDHFYJH964NwTwd-CiZn_wK65xtLPrpZIdPs