Why are foreign businesses always at the top of priority for incentive handouts while local businesses are left to dig deeper for opportunities? Are we going to continue to discriminate against PNG enterprises and encourage foreigners to make extra profit at our expense? When will we give value to our PNG ways and our 100% local industries?

Source: The National

The country is losing out on millions of kina because of tax incentives offered to foreign investors, says Taxation Review Committee chairman Sir Nagora Bogan.

Presenting an update on the work of his committee, Sir Nagora said that he wanted to do away with most of the incentives.

“It’s costing the country God knows how much,” Sir Nagora, a former chief tax collector, told The National.

“Half the time we are at the losing end (when it came to incentives).”

“Many of the big companies that come in have the best lawyers and best accountants and when they lay their deals out, our guys are not well-equipped, competent or professional enough, let alone being assertive,” Sir Nagora said.

“We give up so much in terms of incentives because it’s too hard for us in the first place. It’s happening in LNG, it’s happening in quite a lot of projects.

“A lot of people are looking at tax incentives, we’re giving incentives left, right, and centre. We have no control and there are no records of how much we are giving away in terms of tax incentives. It cuts across the resource sector to forestry, fisheries – there are lots of these incentives. Half the time because of the number of years these things have built up, nobody wants to go back and unravel these things.

“The idea of reducing corporate tax is in itself an incentive already.”