Prime Minister O'Neill wants Papua New Guineans to venture into SMEs

Prime Minister  Peter O’Neill would like to see more Papua New Guineans venture into Small to Medium Enterprises and has vowed his government’s commitment towards this cause.

These remarks were made by Prime Minister Hon. Peter O’Neill after learning that of the 5,000 applications that the National Development Bank Investment Limited (NDBI) for the Stret Pasin Retail Business Incubation Program, only 10 were successful.

The statistics had been provided by NDBI Chief Executive Officer Des Yaninen in his welcome address to guests including senior ministers of government who had attended the opening of NDBI’s first convenient shop in Port Moresby yesterday. Guests heard the main purpose of the program was to allow indigenous PNG couples to jointly apply for the program, which would eventually see them take ownership of the shops under the scheme.

The program had six stringent tiers, eligibility, credit check, examination, training, business management.

Prime Minister Hon. Peter O’Neill said the SME’s to be the main driver of the economy of many of the first world nations. He said in PNG that many of the indigenous Papua New Guineans had started out with the Stret Pasin Stoa program adding a good number had gone on to become millionaires.

In commending not only the bank for its efforts in introducing and driving the program he said it to be his desire to open not just one or ten but 5,000 shops for all who had applied.

He said the challenge for government over the next four to five years would be to ensure many more Papua New Guineans get into business. “We (government) must take up this challenge. We have already done so by putting money into the commercial banks including K100 million to the National Development Bank (NDB) and K200million into Bank South Pacific (BSP) for housing.

“This is so that Papua New Guineans donot expect hand-outs but go the bank, borrow, work hard and repay at an affordable rate. Easy money does not last. “There were 5,000 applicants and we must open shops for all of them,” he said.

A businessman himself and a once owner of a trade-store, Prime Minister Hon. Peter O’Neill said the task of running a business in country to be very challenging especially given the cultural practices. However, he said the key to success of any business to be discipline.