According to the 2022 National Budget, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is projected to reach 101 billion in 2022, the first time that the country’s GDP has exceeded 100 billion mark.
“This is compared to K81 billion in 2020 and K93 billion in 2021, a K3.1 billion increase against the budget of K90 billion,” says Chair of the Plans and Estimates Parliamentary Committee and Governor for East Sepik, Allan Bird.
“The expected GDP growth is 5.4 per cent against the world average growth of 6.3 per cent projected for emerging economies around the world. Our economy is classified as emerging economy.”
Bird said the 5.4 per cent projected growth is conservative when compared to what the world is predicting.
Governor Bird also stated that the Committee questioned Treasury on justification of the projected increase of revenue from 13.674 billion this year, to 16.19 billion, an increase of 24 per cent.
“Their response was that it was because of COVID 19, we are coming back from a very low base. They also said that the IRC and Customs have made significant improvements this year in collections and that it is in line with the projected GDP growth.”
Governor Bird said these projections are also coupled with increasing costs of commodities PNG supplies such as oil, gas, gold and agricultural commodities, due to the pandemic.
Governor Bird also attributed the increase in projected GDP to the reluctance of the government to go into a hard lockdown in NCD and other areas.
“We want to encourage the government to avoid hard lockdowns in the future because we have seen some good results in the GDP. We should only do it if it is based on strong medical advice.”