Posted By Staff Reporter
![]() By Alan Bird This week Wewak Urban LLG workers will be laid off because their revenue source the main market has been closed for 4 weeks due to COVID19 SOE. Pretty soon other taxes will dry up at national level, so no salaries for Medical Workers and other essential personnel. The government needs K120m every payday to pay its workforce. So with no tax revenue we have to borrow. GoPNG has indicated it will borrow K6b this year to help the country ride out COVID19. The highest loan in our entire history. Bear in mind that in 2011, before NA was removed from power our total debt from 1975 to 2011 stood at K6.8b, we are going to borrow almost the same amount this year alone. I campaigned against additional debt, I would have preferred that we work our way out of debt as a country. But with K24b in borrowings by the O'Neil government and now K6b by my government, I realize that we are getting into a hole that is going to be difficult to get out of. By the end of this year our total debt could be close to K40b. Unlike Australia which captured its windfall resource revenues in several sovereign wealth funds and now has almost $1 trillion in savings we don't have a single toea in savings. We squandered our savings in elite capture mechanisms like KPHL. Only a strong economic recovery will get PNG out of this hole. This debt will be around long after I have retired from politics. Our people must realize that our economic fundamentals were good before the SOE. Demand was strong and supply was strong so the basis for growth is still there. We simply shut down supply and demand in one action. The entire world did that. So for the next few months, almost everything in PNG will be paid for from loans. It's as simple as that. Then we need to repay these loans and inorder to do that, we need private sector to start working again. So I support the call by PMJM to reopen the economy, get it up and running because we have a K40b debt to repay, we all do. Business houses must develop safe work practices to manage COVID19 just like we have to manage every other risk. Government needs to do the same. Government must also start investing strategically for economic growth. I criticized the previous government because K24b in borrowings did not result in economic growth. I don't want the government I am part of to repeat the same mistakes. Our people can't afford for this government to repeat the mistakes of the past. The previous government has invested in pet projects for it's ministers to the detriment of the country. I hope PMJM is strong enough to resist going down the same road. In the end, love it or hate it, we are all in this together and the only way out is do the hard things we must. Open up our economy, shut down the areas with COVID19 but let the ship of state continue sailing, we have 22 business units, if 10 provinces have COVID19, let the other 12 start working. Next : PNG's Economy Remains A Priority For The Govt: PM James Marape Comments are closed.
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