Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer, Charles Abel, will launch two PNG Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (PNGEITI) reports on Wednesday (Feb 28).
The reports, concurrently compiled last year, cover the fiscal years 2015 and 2016 and encompass large scale mining, oil and gas projects that were in production.
PNGEITI Head of Secretariat, Lucas Alkan, said: “The reports list 9 reporting entities from mining sector and 7 entities from the oil and gas sector that made material payments to the government in 2015 and 2016.
“It also lists 7 SOEs and 8 relevant government departments that received these payments in the same years.”
Alkan said the revenue streams covered in the reports were; Mining and petroleum tax (corporate income tax), group tax (tax withheld on employee salaries), royalties, equity distributions, production levy, dividends, development levy.
“Apart from reconciliation of these revenues and payment figures, the reports also provide detailed contextual information on the extractive sector that include such information as existing laws and fiscal regimes governing the sector, its contribution to the economy, license registers and so forth,” Alkan explained.
“The Government made significant progress towards meeting EITI global best practice requirements to be accepted as an EITI compliant country.
“We’ve had the honour having Prime Minister Peter O’Neill launch the first EITI Report in 2016 and now we are going to have the Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer, Charles Abel, who is also the chairman of the Multi Stakeholder Group (MSG) – the PNGEITI overseeing body – to launch the two reports.
“The first report highlighted serious information gaps and inconsistencies that required government attention. These were listed as recommendations for the government to consider going forward in the next EITI reports.
“Consequently, these were brought to NEC where a directive was given for affected State entities to implement those recommendations,” Alkan said.
(PNGEITI Head of National Secretariat, Lucas Alkan, left and Treasury Secretary Dairi Vele during the launch of the fist PNGEITI Report in 2016, State Function Room, Parliament Building. The first PNGEITI Report covered the Fiscal Year 2013)