An affiliate of the Papua New Guinea Indigenous Business Council says the country isn't doing enough to encourage grassroots people to develop businesses.
The Council is working on securing more government buy-in on its plan to increase the indigenous ownership of the formal economy to be 70 percent by 2050.
The Peter O'Neill-led government has been establishing programmes to encourage Small to Medium Enterprises, SMEs.
However, Hubert Namani says the costs of doing business in PNG remain so high that most grassroots people are unable to get businesses off the ground.
"There's a lot of success stories around. But going down to the grassroots level, I think they're the ones that really need support. Sometimes, I think government needs to put some programmes into providing them incentives, microfinancing. I'm not sure we're doing enough. I don't think we're doing enough."
Hubert Namani
