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THERE will be no more export of tuna fish oversea, but all the catches in Papua New Guinea waters will be processed in the country, according to Minister for Fisheries and Marine Resources Jelta Wong.
Mr Wong said: “We must teach our people on downstream processing so all products are processed in PNG instead of exporting it to overseas facility. This is the drive now that National Fisheries Authority (NFA) is taking.
“Our goals are set; we will no longer be exporting straight out of the country to foreign countries for them to process our fish. We are on the second-third step now to ensure that all tuna is process with in PNG.”
He said the government is helping foreign investments providing investors with the policies and the programs that comes under Special Economic Zone tax concession (tax free for sometime) for the investors to do business and encourage the investment to help local people.
He also emphasised the importance of security, where locals must look after investors and in return, they will boost the economy which will make the country flourish.
Mr Wong said in July NFA signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with China. The MoU is a strategic cooperation with Guangzhou; a milestone achievement with the Guangzhou Aquatic Products Chamber of Commerce in China, which provides a general framework for cooperation for PNG’s seafood products to be exported directly to NFA cool storage facility for freeze, chill and live fisheries products.
The facility will house fish and other marine products and not tuna.
“Papua New Guineans must realise that things do not happen over night. You need somebody to have firm hands on a program that has policy that can protect the interest of all the citizens.
In the past foreign investment use to take advantage of our people and its resources, this will not be the case now with the new policies in place,” he said.
He said fisheries sector is a local industry and we want it to stay as local industry.
Only the processing side of things we (PNG) do not have the expertise so we went outside to foreign investors to come and build facilities and run the facilities, but also train our local people to gain hands on skills and knowledge.
By now we should be teaching our people to be managers of such facilities once it is set up in the country. He said with the Ministry of International Trade and Investment setting SEZ program we can archieve the goals that we want.
Mr Wong made the following remarks recently when announcing the K200,000 sponsorship to the second 2025 Special Economic Zone Summit that will be hosted in August.
Mr Wong appealed to the government of the People’s Republic of China to consider a Free Trade Agreement between PNG and China where fish can be considered a trial case study for Trade in Goods.
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