The Minister for International Trade and Investment, Hon. Richard Maru and the New Zealand Minister for Agriculture, Hunting and Fishing, Forestry, and Trade, Hon. Todd McClay have agreed for a small Papua New Guinea (PNG) delegation to visit New Zealand in the last week of April to hold high-level trade talks. The two Ministers agreed on this in their meeting recently at the margins of the World Trade Organization (WTO) 13th Ministerial Conference (MC13) in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Minister Maru said the visit to New Zealand in April will be to learn from the experience of New Zealand’s capital market industry and seek New Zealand Government’s support to transform the Securities Commission of PNG and the capital market industry of PNG. Apart from the capital market industry, the PNG delegation will also visit the chicken and dairy farms in New Zealand and invite the New Zealand investors in these industries to invest in PNG.
“We want to look at New Zealand’s chicken industry and invite the New Zealand investors in this industry to come and invest in PNG because we still continue to import an estimate of over K100 million worth of chicken annually and this results in loss of jobs and revenue for our MSMEs, SMEs, and our industry. We want to stop that. We also do not want to be exposed to the risk of imported chicken diseases like the Avian Influenza and others. We want to produce enough day-old chicks to supply the entire need of our nation, our farmers, and our industry so we are able to produce enough chicken locally to meet the growing demand for chicken. We also want to meet and invite some potential New Zealand investors to invest in our Special Economic Zones,” said Minister Maru.
Minister Maru added: “We also want to meet the Indigenous Maori Commission to discuss and learn about how indigenous Maori businesses are doing business in major industries. This is a lead-up on part of our preparations to host our first PNG Indigenous Business Summit in August this year at Kokopo, East New Britain Province. We really want to learn from the success of Maori indigenous businesses and also consider inviting some of them to be the speakers at our PNG Indigenous Business Summit.”
