PNGBLOGS

by MICHAEL.J PASSINGAN Last month Prime Minister Peter O’Neill publicly stated that the nation’s annual GDP growth rate is 9.2 percent. He said Papua New Guinea’s growth rate is the envy of many world economies – “9.2% is miles better  than the global average, which is about 3 percent or less”. That was untrue when he said it, and the Prime Minister knew it to be untrue. The growth rate for the year, according to the 2016 Budget, was 4.2 percent. But in fact PNG’s GDP growth rate at the time Mr O’Neill lied to the people was less than 4.2 percent. Confirmation of that comes with the release yesterday of the IMF’s World Economic Outlook. That authoritative document estimates PNG’s annual growth rate this year is 3.1%. This is very bad news for Papua New Guineans. It puts PNG’s GDP growth amongst the lowest in the world. But the accompanying graph shows that the situation is even worse than that. Under the corrupt, reckless and wasteful PNC Regime of Peter O’Neill, national

NO MORE EXCUSES FOR THE PRIME MINISTER On Tuesday April 5, 2016, Prime Minister Peter O’Neill said: “We all know who are the real financial beneficiaries of the Paraka transactions. “I look forward to the facts seeing the light of day on this issue.” He now has a duty to go to the police and submit to an interview on Parakagate to provide them with these facts. His failure to do opens the way for him to be charged with further very serious criminal offences (see below). It insults the Office of the Prime Minister and the people of Papua New Guinea. NO MORE LIES. NO MORE DELAYS. Opposition Leader Don Polye voluntarily went to the police to tell them what he knows about Parakagate. He has done his duty as a law-abiding citizen. Every other law-abiding citizen in the country would do the same. So should the Prime Minister. WHAT’S SO SPECIAL ABOUT THE PRIME MINISTER? There is nothing special about the Prime Minister. He has no more rights than any other citizen. He should behave like any

PNGBLOGS EXCLUSIVE PNG IS GONE AS A SOVEREIGN NATION IN JUNE IF NOTHING IS DONE TO REVERSE THE LOAN TAKEN BY O'NEILL GOVERNMENT TO BUY OSL SHARES. If the PNG Government does not find USD 1.5 Billion by 13th June, 2016, UBS will ask the government to Appoint a Receiver Manager for the Oil Search shares, the Receiver Manager will manager the Escrow account in Singapore. by June UBS will declare PNG bankrupt. This frightening revelation was revealed to PNGBLOGS by Government Insider working with the Department of Prime Minister and NEC who has sighted the original deed. The Principal Maturity date for the UBS loan was 13th March 2016.The Papua New Guinea Government has now K3.2 billion to pay UBS. We are in the grace period but that ends on the 13th June, 2016. Peter O'Neil signed with JP Morgan for refinancing turnaround time two weeks has lapsed. The World Bank, IMF, ADB and AusAid have already started painting bad picture about Peter O'Neil. He is an economi

by MICHAEL JOSEPH PASSINGAN Prime Minister Peter O’Neill has just cost Papua New Guinea almost K1.5 billion because of his reckless, corrupt and unnecessary borrowings. The loss is on the refinancing of his illegal K3 billion UBS-Oil Search loan. The deal was done in secret in Sydney earlier this month to avoid having to reveal the massive loss that the Prime Minister, UBS and Oil Search have inflicted on the nation. Details of the deal were not revealed when Kumul Petroleum MD Wapu Sonk announced it over the weekend.  Mr O’Neill’s secret loss comes at a time when the Government is virtually bankrupt, unable to pay public servants and cutting spending on essential services such as health, education and power generation.  It will add to the record and illegal levels of debt already incurred by the Prime Minister. It will contribute to further worsening of the living standards of ordinary Papua New Guineans. The refinancing of the UBS-Oil Search loan is even worse tha

by MICHAEL J PASSINGAN Recent attempts to transfer money from Papua New Guinea to Australia highlight growing concerns about money-laundering between the two countries. The Prime Minister, Peter O’Neill, transferred K200 million to Australia late last year, and shortly afterwards one of his special lady friends, Ni Cragnolini, transferred K50 million. Some years before more than K100 million of public funds was washed through the Commonwealth Bank in Lismore, NSW, in a self-evidently illegal transaction. The Australian authorities refused to take action on this transfer when requested to do so by PNG. Indeed, the then Australian Treasurer, Wayne Swan, did not even bother to reply to requests for action. It is not known whether AUSTRAC, Australia’s money-laundering watchdog, stopped the latest transfers, or whether it even knew about them. It is not known whether the PNG and Australian banks involved reported the transactions as possibly suspicious. The chances are t

by MICHAEL J PASSINGAN Prime Minister Peter O’Neill reckless, corrupt and unnecessary borrowing is hurting families and crippling the nation with debt that future generations must pay. In 2015 actual Government debt reached K18,571.40 per household under O’Neill. That number will increase with new borrowings proposed by the Prime Minister, including the $1 billion sovereign bond issue. Families must repay O’Neill’s debt whether they like it or not. Repayment will require new domestic revenue-raising and cost-savings: Higher personal and corporate taxes as well as a 50% increase in the GST Increases in SOE fees and charges such as O’Neill’s secret rises for all MVIL services including registration and insurance A further decline in government services and outsourcing of service provision to the Prime Minister’s colleagues and cronies A fire sale of government assets and equity including SOEs such as PNG Power and Air Niugini to the Prime Minister’s col

by BRYAN KRAMER Deputy Secretary of Treasury Mr. Aloysius Hamou was formally charged by Fraud Squad yesterday (28/1/16) for allegedly approving and facilitating the unlawful procurement of K50 million to purchase two turbine generators. The funds were drawn from the Department of Treasury back in December 2013 at the direction of Secretary of Treasury, Dairi Vele acting on the instructions of Prime Minister Peter O'Neill. Hamou w as charged under Section 91(1)(b) of Criminal Code, (False Claims by Officials). The provision states that a person employed in the Public Service who makes a return or statement touching any such matter that is, to his knowledge, false in any material particular, is guilty of a misdemeanour. Penalty: Imprisonment for a term not exceeding three years. Current Secretary of Treasury Dairi Vele is also facing criminal charges in relation to the same matter after the District Court issued a warrant for his arrest in July 2015. To-date V

by MARK AMBANE Prime Minister Peter O’Neill’s illegal and corrupt deal with UBS to buy 10 percent of Oil Search is now a full-scale disaster. It is threatening the viability of the 2016 Budget and could further undermine Government finances, which are already at crisis point. The State’s 150 million shares were bought in March 2014 for $8.20 each. That is a total $A1.2 billion, or about K3 billion at the exchange rate early that month. A few days later, on 14 March 2014, the Prime Minister boasted that the country had already made a profit on the shares of $A75 million (about K170 million). Today, the losses on the purchase are stupendous. Those 159 million shares were worth slightly less than $A5.70 today. That is a loss of $A400 million. At today’s exchange rate that is about K850 million. Peter O’Neill, Peter Botton of Oil Search and UBS have cost Papua New Guineans almost a billion kina. Worse still, the disastrous slide in the value of Oil

by JACK NAIME Another independent international assessment of Papua New Guinea’s financial management has contradicted the spin and deception by Prime Minister Peter O’Neill, Treasury Secretary Daire Vele and the mainstream media led by the Post-Courier. The report, Poor Financial Management in PNG: Can It Be Turned Around? Is available here: http://devpolicy.org/pngs-financial-management-can-it-be-turned-around-20160112/ . It was written by PFMConnect, a respected international consultancy specialising in developing country financial management. The report slams the O’Neill Government’s financial management and reinforces the criticism of other independent international observers who have exposed the corruption, incompetence and waste that is rife under Peter O’Neill and Daire Vele. Papua New Guinea ranks 21st out of the 24 assessments of Public Financial Management conducted by the IMF last year, according to the report. Most alarming is the fact that under Mr O’N

by BARRY PISIMI On or around September 2012, immediately after Peter O’Neill was installed as the Prime Minister, he (O’Neill) took a huge delegate to China, organised by his sidekick, Ni Cragnolini. It was openly reported that a loan of K6 billion was obtained from the Chinese Export-Import Bank (Exim Bank) to fund certain rehabilitation of ailing infrastructures. One would have thought that PNG Powers rundown and incompatible power generation and distribution equipment would be first priority. NO! The K6 Billion was never appropriated in the 2012 National Budget, nor was it captured in the subsequent budgets in 2013, 2014 and 2015. We really don’t know whether that loan was obtained and if so, did the money ever enter PNG? One of the mandatory conditions of Exim Bank loans is that a Chinese multi-national corporation, mostly State owned enterprises, has to be nominated to deliver the projects identified by the recipient country. Under this arrangement, the funds remain in Chi

by KOMBOL GIBSON   PNG is endowed with a $19bn oil and gas industry. The size of this industry is set to double and almost triple. It’s an exciting prospect for PNG but challenges remain for delivering that blessing to every man, woman and child in PNG. In fact the opposite is happening. PNG should be concerned. There is a large focus on Government-funded programmes in the Hela and Southern Highlands Provinces instead of a more equitable arrangement for all 21 Provinces in PNG. That is a story for another day and a subsequent article, but the upshot of this focus on Hela and SHP is that the vast majority of it ends up in the hands of elites from these Provinces that reside elsewhere, access health services in Port Moresby or overseas, send their children to school overseas, maintaining multiple wives and mistresses and invest in Port Moresby or overseas. So roughly 80% of funding that gets diverted to Hela and SHP ends up in the pockets of Ministers, MPs, senior public servants, a

by PAULUS KANAMBO Peter O’Steal, the biggest liar, thief and konman in PNG history, has been exposed again by new facts revealed about the 2016 Budget. He said the 2016 money plan was “a conservative budget that carefully manages spending to ensure essential services are delivered to the people. Core services for our grassroots including school fees and access to healthcare will continue to be properly funded. “Our law and order programs will continue with more funding for police, the courts and correctional services. “Funding for critical infrastructure will be maintained in order to provide ongoing stimulus for business and for job creation.” Each and every one of these statements by O’Steal is a lie, as shown by the latest economic research by the prestigious Lowy Institute in Sydney. THE FACTS ABOUT PETER O’STEAL’S LIES Core services for grassroots have in fact been savagely cut because of O’Steal’s corruption, waste and mismanagement. Education sp