The government of Papua New Guinea (PNG) is working to overhaul the country’s fisheries sector as part of a series of reforms designed to achieve national status as a high-income, manufacturing economy by 2045.
PNG Prime Minister James Marape is pushing to “ensure the region and other Pacific island countries gain maximum benefit from their resources” through a transformation from being an exporter of raw resources into a manufacturer, according to PNG Business News. This vision involves a push toward downstream processing of the region’s marine resources, especially tuna, and efforts to have smaller Pacific Island countries send their tuna to PNG for processing.
“To make this leap from exporting raw resources to building a manufacturing-based economy, we must secure critical enablers like affordable and reliable electricity, accessible internet, and vital infrastructure such as ports and jetties. We need to reorganize our towns and cities, revamp our education system to prepare our people for industry-specific roles, and ensure our health facilities are prepared for this transformation,” Marape said following the 79th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in September 2024.
As part of that effort, the PNG Ministry of International Trade and Investment is partnering with the Madang provincial government and General Santos, Philippines-headquartered tuna supplier and processor RD Corporation to develop a 650-hectare development aimed at becoming a commercial hub for the tuna sector.
The Madang Integrated Special Economic Zone in Vidar, Madang, will be modeled after the Java Integrated Industrial Port Estate in Indonesia and General Santos in the Philippines. It will feature canneries, a fuel depot, cold storage, a slipway, a shipyard, and various associated businesses such as tin can manufacturing, a packaging factory, and aquafeed production facilities. The development will also feature a residential estate, shopping malls, schools, a bank, and an international wharf designed to improve shipping and logistics for the northern part of the country.
PNG accounts for 18 percent of the world’s tuna catch, but the majority is processed overseas, according to PNG Minister for International Trade and Investment Richard Maru. PNG’s fisheries exports have remained steady at PGK 1 billion (USD 255 million, EUR 232 million) since 2016, but most of the revenue comes from resource rents, Maru said.
“Papua New Guinea has missed significant opportunities over the past 49 years by being merely a rent collector in the fisheries sector. We should have fully domesticated our fisheries industry, but we have not. As a result, 80 percent of our catch is taken overseas, and we have missed out on building additional canneries, losing 50,000 jobs,” Maru told PNG Business News. “Our current net revenue is only PGK 300 million [USD 76 million, EUR 70 million] a year, but we could be generating PGK 5 billion [USD 1.3 billion, EUR 1.2 billion] in revenue. We also lose out on landing fees, shipping licenses, jobs, wages, income taxes, corporate taxes, GST, and local commercial opportunities linked to the fishing industry.”
Despite a 2017 sourcing deal signed between RD Corporation and Pacifical, the global tuna marketing firm representing the eight countries belonging to the Parties of the Nauru Agreement (PNA), the company has struggled to operate profitably in PNG, as it has lacked U.S. dollars to pay suppliers, according to the Post Courier, and has suffered supply shortages resulting in insufficient product to satisfy domestic demand, The National reported. Its facility in Madang, PNG, is currently producing around 150 metric tons (MT) of fish daily but needs 200 MT of output to maintain profitability.
As a marker of what is needed to ensure the success of the Madang Integrated Special Economic Zone, Maru cited the example of Majestic Seafood, a tuna canner in Lae, PNG, that closed in July 2023, resulting in the loss of 3,000 to 5,000 jobs.
“The plant was not able to source enough fish each day to process to its full capacity; it was only processing up to 15 to 20 MT of fish each day,” Maru told PNG Business News. “Most of the fish caught by other companies at sea were taken to other countries for processing. This also underlines the importance of owning our own fishing vessels and our own crew and introducing the domestication policy so we can land our fish onshore and process it in our cannery and enjoy the maximum benefits of our fisheries resources."
The Madang Integrated Special Economic Zone will be developed in two phases, with the first done as a 50-50 joint venture with RD Corporation, centered on developing PNG’s domestic fleet and fishing capacity, according to Maru. Under the agreement, RD Corporation will operate PNG-owned fishing vessels and employ local crew. If that is successful, the PNG government will advance the second phase of the project, involving a cannery and associated facilities on its own, which Maru said will then lure private industry into the development, along with tax breaks and other incentives.
“Fishing states often have a large fishing fleet, extensive coastal waters, and a strong presence in international fisheries management organizations. PNG has missed out big time by being a rent collector, and the Marape-Rosso government has made a very bold decision to shift us from being a rent collector to a fishing state," Maru said. “[But currently], we do not have the management experience nor the technology and skills of commercial fishing enterprise as a country. We need to partner and learn the trade of the commercial fishing business first over a period of time until we are confident to venture on our own. We have to learn to crawl before we can walk.”
Furthering this initiative, Marape has pushed for investment and market access from the European Union, Australia, and New Zealand, and recently told Pacific Islands Forum Secretary General Baron Waqa he hopes to build PNG into a regional tuna powerhouse that takes in raw material from other PIF nations.
“We are creating special economic zones to cater for fisheries and fish processing facilities in our country so your smaller island countries fish or tuna can be processed in PNG and exported to get maximum value,” Marape said, according to PNG Business News. “The Pacific has accounted for majority of the tuna export in the region to markets in Europe and Asia, but this is not processed rather goes as raw tuna. Now, the PIF member countries should move away from dollar grants to downstream processing and into trade-to-trade relations.”
Attending the 2024 Seafood Expo Asia in Singapore in September, PNG National Fisheries Authority Executive Manager Jonathan Manieva said as part of the overhaul of the country’s approach to fisheries, his agency is now formulating ...