The K22 billion National Budget has been passed with no further objections, following a lengthy debate.
Prime Minister James Marape described the 2022 money plan as a “milestone budget”.
“This is a milestone budget because it is the first budget-proper for the nation to enter into the K20-billion budget realm,” Marape said.
“No past government has entered into this space.
“For the first time, in tough times, we are entering into the threshold of a K100 billion economy as focused by the Treasurer,” PM Marape said.
Marape said when he first addressed Parliament in 2019 as Prime Minister, he said PNG would become the “richest black Christian nation”, and in 10 years would become a K200 billion economy.
He added he was pleased to see in Treasurer Ian Ling-Stuckey’s presentation that throughout the rollout of the 2022 Fiscal Year targets, “we will have a glimpse of surplus budgets starting in 2027, and a Papua New Guinea with no sovereign debt by 2034, if we choose to travel the road we are seeing today – the PANGU Rot (Road)”.
“This is a momentous and key national milestone as we are reaching a K200 billion economy in 2031, by the way we are focused,” Marape said.
“Our Budget is focused not on just 2022, but within the 13-year window that the Treasurer has opened for us to glimpse into the future.”
He said Ling-Stuckey’s plan would bring PNG from a “very expensive, debt-riddled economy to a surplus debt-eradicated economy”.
“The reconstruction started three years ago, despite the once-in-a-hundred years pandemic, despite political instability in our country, despite the weak broken-down systems,” he said.
“Our economy, despite systematic complacency and corruption over many years, is now seeing signs of better times ahead."