Sunday 5 August 2018

Peter O'Neill has lied about the K24-billion loan - here is why??

by Fontenu Bulletin

MOST Papua New Guineans watched the telecast of Wednesdays Parliament seating with utter disgust and disbelieve. I for one was very sickened to hear response from the Prime Ministers mouth on the floor of the honourable house on question put to him both by Lae MP John Rosso and Madang MP Brian Kramer. In his responses, he did three reckless and senseless things:

1. He LIED in broad day light about the total sum of loans
2. He THREATENED to suffocate an entire district from development funds
3. He FORCED everyone to only trust what comes out from his mouth and not from any internationally independent organizations and observers

This write-up is a comprehensive analysis that will not only maintain that O’Neill has lied, but will go ahead and expose ALL loans for everyone to calculate and confirm whether O’Neill loan figure of K24 Billion is correct or the reports from International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank of K70 Billion and K60 Billion respectively are correct.

Now, before we go further, here are few points to consider. Firstly, some of the huge loans we may have heard of are procured outside of the National Budgets gazette and outside of Parliament’s approval. All these loans are not recorded with the Department of Treasury. They are regarded as “Off Balance Sheet” debts. They may not necessarily be source in terms of hard cash money but is flexible and can come in the forms of projects, (like most of the Chinese Infrastructure loans).

When these types of loan are sourced, they are not included in the Treasury’s loan balance, but are directed straight from lender to the project accounts or whatever the intended purpose may be. This loans overlap both the treasury and the media, thus most of us don’t know how many of such loans O’Neill has being getting and by how much it stands in total now. Few of the Off Balance Sheet loans that I know of today are:

1. K3 billion UBS Loan
2. K6 Billion Chinese Exim Bank Loan
3. K900 Million Motukea Dry Dock Syndicate loan
4. K300 million Nautilus Deep Sea Mining Experiment
5. K70 million Batuka School Project in Port Moresby and more

On top of the above, we have the loans that are registered in the Treasury. There are just many of these loans procured in the last five years. I will list few to ensure this write-up doesn’t get too long and boring. Starting from the most recent down:

1. LOANS IN 2018
K813.82 million from Asian Development Bank and World Bank to support the National Budget, K960 million loan for Health from ADB, K597 million EXIM Chinese loan for Pacific Marine Industrial Zone in Madang, etc…

2. LOANS IN 2017
K14 Billion Chinese Infrastructure deal, K1.5 billion Credit Suisse loan to ease FOREX, K223 million to fix water supply and sanitation from World Bank, etc…

3. LOANS IN 2016
K3.1 billion loan for national roads network from ADB, K324.5 million loan from India when Indian PM visited PNG, K368 million loan for Highlands highway rehabilitation from ADB, K1.5 billion loan to fund 2016 national budget from International Financier Institution Credit Suisse AG, K772.79 million loan from International Financial Corporation to provide liquidity for FOREX, K454.55 million EXIM Chinese loan for PNG Powers transmission project in the Highlands, etc…

4. LOANS IN 2015
K1.4 billion from ADB to upgrade Highlands Highway, K211.1 million EXIM Chinese loan for National Identity program, etc…

Now, all loans (whether off-balance, balance and concessional) have to be repaid with interest. And O’Neill know that very well so in defending himself, he always claims that the loans are concessional and comes with a lowest repayment percentage in a longer period. However, O’Neill is not entirely honest here. No all of the loans a concessional! Only the Chinese loans are concessional (see my previous post). Other loans have higher interest rate but he keeps sweeping it under the carpets of Chinese loan repayment rates to generalize and give as less information as possible for the fear of backlash.

O’Neill again fail to inform the nation that all loans are denominated in dollars. The kina has lost more than 60% since 2014 so you can bet all you kina that the repayment rates are now doubled. Take for instance, if we were to repay the K6 billion EXIM loan of K1.2 billion interest yearly, with current fiscal situation, we will be repaying K9 billion as loan capital and k1.8billion as new interest payable. That’s almost repaying K10.8 billion for borrowing K6 billion. And mind you, this calculation is for the so-called concessional loans. Just imagine how much this country is paying in the instances of many other non-concessional loans.

So now you tell me, was your prime minister telling the truth when he said the loans are only K24 billion? Make the calculation, numbers don’t lie! O’Neill may dislike and despise all the international financiers like IMF, World Bank, ADB, and IFC and may reject their report but O’Neill must not forget that he gets all those money from these financiers. All these international financiers have their independent record there so from the entire figure above, we can now safely say that O’Neill has again lied to the country with his false loan figure! If only this government is transparent, honest and come public with its repayment updates, we will never know how much this country owes to lenders!

PNG’s economic crisis is far worse than what it appears and I am dumbfounded by the silence of the people in the know. Learned Papua New Guineans continue to zip their mouths and eyes whilst Prime Minister Peter O’Neill continues to peddle his lies across our simple minds. PM Peter O’Neill is undoubtedly the worst Prime Minister this nation has ever seen. Under his watch, he has allowed the PNG Kina to slide down within a period of less than 5 years.

The O’Neill Government had once tried to cover their mess and had artificially pegged the kina and imposed a trading band on it through the Bank of Papua New Guinea. Bank of Papua New Guinea, through late Jacob Weiss (Israeli long time BPNG advisor and O’Neill’s economic advisor) and Loi Bakani, are heavily compromised.

So no wonder O’Neill told Brian Kramer and everyone in Wednesday’s parliament sitting to rely on figures provided by BPNG and his cohorts. It was quite funny and embarrassing when O’Neill can gather enough balls to openly dispute IMF and World Bank in an effort to continue supress access to factual information and further peddle his lies.

O’Neill has time and again proved to everyone that his notorious mismanagement and lies will remain. He is ignorant and arrogant. Instead of taking heed to warnings, independent reports and criticism, he seems to be good at attacking its messenger. Just like what he said about withdrawing DSIP to Madang in parliament on Wednesday.

ike really, can someone tell me, was O’Neill high when he threatened to withdraw DSIP funding of the 60 000+ people of Madang? Now this is utter stupidity, childish and cowardice act and doesn’t deserve a dime of my time discussion this nonsense. Prime Minister, really? C’mon man is this my prime minister?

Someone who attacks messengers instead of addressing the message?! For goodness sake, he even branded Brian Kramer as MORON in the parliament yesterday! O'Neills ego seems to be bigger than the country!

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