PNG IMPROVES TO 109 IN WORLD BANK LIST

Country has updated outdated policies and adopted ICT in registration of companies, says investment agency

ASTABLE government and legislative reforms have helped to improve Papua New Guinea’s (PNG) ranking in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index, according to a Xinhua news agency report.

“Our country’s ease of doing business is independently measured by the World Bank. If we look at the last two years, our ease of doing business has improved about 36 placings,” said PNG Investment Promotion Authority (IPA) chairman Leon Buskens on Monday.

“In 2016, PNG ranked 145 of 189 economies. It was an improvement from previous years, which was due to legislative changes, and our ranking improved to 119 last year and this year we improved 10 places to 109,” he said.

Across the rest of the South Pacific region, Samoa came in at 87th place, Tonga reached 89th, Vanuatu ranked 90th and Fiji registered 101st.

According to Buskens, one of the major reasons for the improvement was the inclusion of information communication technology (ICT) to register companies with the IPA.

“Using ICT as a platform, to make it cost effective, we are now open 24 hours, seven days a week online,” he said.

The change has allowed businesses to register online with the IPA in about 10 minutes.

Previously, Buskens said the process would have taken up to 51 days.

“A lot of our policies are long outdated, for example, we have not reviewed the National Investment Policy for the last two decades.

“We are going through that and again this is to stimulate growth, the other is the Associations Act also going through the process of strengthening that,” he said.