PNGBLOGS

by JAMES PARAKISAN Prime Minister Peter O’Neill and Agriculture Minister Tommy Tomscoll are forcing up the price of food so that more and more people cannot afford basic items such as flour and rice and other imported items. Even prices of local foods are increasingly expensive. The proof - Bank of Papua New Guinea says food prices rose almost 25% in the 12 months to December 31 last year. This is more pain and suffering for the people because of the longlong policies, waste corruption and mismanagement of O’Neill and his Government colleagues like Tomscoll. Tomscoll as Minister for Agriculture is mainly to blame because of his ban on vegetable imports in the middle of last year. But blame also is with O’Neill, whose reckless, wasteful and corrupt borrowings have caused the kina’s value to crash, making all imported food more expensive. In its Monthly Economic Bulletin for January 2016, the central bank reports that fruit and vegetable prices rose by 24