By Sasha Pei-Silovo – EM TV Online
Australia’s Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, is travelling to Papua New Guinea today as chair of the annual Australia-PNG Ministerial Forum.
The minister revealed to the international media that Papua New Guinea’s ‘booming economy’ will be at the heart of talks of the forum; she is being accompanied by the Australian Justice Minister, Michael Keenan, Minister for Defence, David Johnston and Immigration Minister, Scott Morrison.
“Huge revenues will be coming into PNG.
“We want to work with them as economic partners to make sure that PNG has in place sovereign wealth funds so that the money they are receiving from these massive energy projects can be spread throughout PNG,” Bishop told Sky News.
She said that Australia would be encouraging Papua New Guinea to have a sovereign wealth fund set up so as to take advantage of the benefits of the revenues from the PNG Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project.
Ms Bishop stated that PNG was undergoing an “incredible energy renaissance” and Papua New Guinea’s economy is the fastest growing in Asia, with forecasts increases of about 15 to 20 per cent.
This, she said, attributed to the windfalls from the $19 billion ExxonMobil-led PNG LNG project, which went online earlier in 2014.
