Agriculture, Tourism Provide Opportunities

Agriculture and tourism provide substantial future growth opportunities for foreign investment in Papua New Guinea, and British investors are being given the opportunity to play an active role in these growth sectors.

Speaking to more than 150 participants at the UK-Papua New Guinea trade and investment forum in London this week, Prime Minister Peter O’Neill said that alongside the resources sector, agriculture and tourism expansion was broadening PNG’s economic base.

“For many years, the Papua New Guinea economy has been based on the resources sector,” the Prime Minister said when opening the forum,’’ O’Neill said.

“We have delivered the most efficient LNG project in the world, and now with our partners, we are initiating our second LNG project with Total from France.

“Demand for LNG will continue to increase in the next thirty years and this provides opportunities for investment with a healthy return.

“At the same time, as an economy, we must broaden our horizons so that we are not held captive to the boom-and-bust cycles of the global resource sector.

“Over the past few years, we have been broadening the base of our economy focusing on sectors such as agriculture and tourism to be the key drivers of the economy in the years to come.

“Our people were some of the first in human history to establish organised agriculture.

“We have some of the most fertile soil in the world and a great landmass available for agriculture.

“We need to mobilise the capital that is needed to open up opportunities to produce more food for our growing population, and access the huge export markets in Asia.

“We are commercially producing milk, expanding production of cocoa and coffee and embarking on producing more of our own rice.

“Just as an example, we have demonstrated that double the yield of rice per hectare can be grown in our soil than is possible in other parts of South East Asia.”

(Source: Papua New Guinea Post-Courier 02 May 2018)

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