PORT MORESBY: Opposition Leader Don Pomb Polye says the lack of funding in the agriculture sector is due to ‘weak leadership and vague visions,’ which impede the country’s development aspirations. Mr Polye said the country’s former Prime Ministers like Sir Michael Somare, Sir Julius Chan, Sir Rabbie Namaliu and Sir Mekere Morauta among others only tried their best to bail the country out from this dilemma. He, however, added that funding was ‘a problem, not like today as the Prime Minister Peter O’Neill and his government are having exciting time while spending millions of taxpayers’ money on economically inexcusable areas.’ He said he wasstrong-minded that the Opposition, which he is leading, would provide this missing-link leadership to improve the country’s development index in par with that of other middle income-earning countries. He said this when commenting on the two-day 2016 Agriculture Leaders’ Summit in Port Moresby last week. “Our Opposition believes that PNG can achieve its development aspirationsvia the development of skills in our people and the growth of industries to absorb the skilled people in the employment sector. “The major industries include agriculture, livestock, aqua-culture, SMEs, tourism and, export and import substitution,” he said. Polye further said in this way the country would be at a cross-road of developing and sustaining the growth of businesses, the economy and the employment for the betterment of the people. He said, when in government, they would allow LNG or other dividends from the extractive industry to go into the Sovereign Wealth Fund. Through the budgetary process, he said, they would convert these proceeds (i.e. tax) and any other windfalls to drive their skill-industry growth strategy. Polye said they would invest about K500 million in the skill development and a total of K1.5 billion to transform the industries via a transparent monitoring unit called Industry Commercialization program. Meanwhile, Mr Polye said when he was the Treasury Minister, he allocated K50 million for the Sepik plain through a program he termed as Agriculture Commercialization program.
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