Minister for International Trade and Investment, Hon. Richard Maru announced today that Papua New Guinea’s new journey to achieve economic transformation has started with the arrival of an expert team from Japan Development Institute (JDI) to work with the local experts to help PNG formulate its SEZ Masterplan. The team will visit potential Special Economic Zone (SEZs) locations across the country in the next two weeks. Minister Maru said that enough talking about SEZ has been done and it was now time for implementation, starting with the visits over the next two weeks.
“The draft Masterplan will be presented in April next year when PNG hosts its very first SEZ Summit in Port Moresby where all SEZ experts from around the world will come together to share their story and experience on how their countries used SEZs as a vehicle for economy growth. These experts will be given the opportunity to comment and put their input in the draft Masterplan before it finalized and presented to the Government for approval and implementation,” said Minister Maru.
The JDI team of experts led by the JDI CEO and Chairman, Dr. Shoichi Kobayashi together with the local experts will visit the following provinces and regions in the next two weeks:
Kokopo Tourism Zone, Tokua Airport City SEZ and Gazelle Agro SEZ (East New Britain), Sepik Plains SEZ (East Sepik), Vanimo Free Trade Zone (Sandaun), Central Province Rice Zone, Baiyer Agriculture Zone (Western Highlands), Karamui Agriculture Zone (Simbu), Middle Ramu Economic Zone and PMIZ (Madang), Western Province SEZ, Labu SEZ, Nadzab Airport City SEZ and Lae- Nadzab SEZ (Morobe), Ihu SEZ (Gulf), and Manus Special Economic Region.
This visit is for the team to familiarize and see the potential SEZ locations in the country and another visit will follow in January next year where they will meet the Provincial leaders and Members of each Districts for detailed discussions on their respective SEZs and also fill in the information gaps from the preliminary familiarization visits.
Minister Maru said he is inspired by the experience of the Philippines who has established 420 SEZs in the last two decades and these SEZs have created over 1.7 million jobs and investments of over 4 trillion pesos. Now more and more SEZs are being established each year following the success of SEZs as the primary economic driver for the Philippines.
“We want to start bringing in investors to start establishing the SEZs by next year so we can create jobs for our people and transform our economy. Our over dependence on the resource sector has left us where we are now- highest level of unemployment, highest level of deficit, highest level of national debt, and highest level of lawlessness. While our national revenue will be only K17 billion this year, New Zealand who has no resource projects has a revenue of 190 NZ dollars and a GDP of 250 billion US dollars while PNG only has a GDP of K26 billion. Agriculture and Tourism are the only contributors to the economy of New Zealand. We have a lot to learn from countries like this. It will require a lot of hard work, but we are determined to get there, starting with this study which is very important,” said Minister Maru.
Minister Maru thanked Prime Minister James Marape for his vision of establishing SEZs as a vehicle to drive economic transformation for the country and for the establishment of the new Ministry of International Trade and Investment.
