Papua New Guinea's population is estimated at about 7.8 million people.
That is the assumption of the planning minister, Charles Abel, who has just released census data from 2011, which showed at that stage that the country's population had reached 7.3 million.
Mr Abel says since the year 2000 PNG's population has grown nearly 40 percent with an annual rate of growth of 3.1 percent and he believes that rate would have been maintained through to 2014.
The census shows the rate of growth is significantly higher than in 1980, when it was 2.2 percent.
It also shows that the populations in the Highlands and Island regions are growing faster than the national average.
