Papua New Guinea's Treasurer says the government is working to refine fiscal terms around new resource extractive projects.
Charles Abel admits that PNG's dependence on revenues from mining, oil and gas projects in the country has left it vulnerable to external forces.
PNG has gone through challenging economic times in recent years, but he says it's gradually emerging from them.
Charles Abel Photo: RNZ Pacific/ Koroi Hawkins
With some big new gas and mining projects on the horizon, Mr Abel says the government is negotiating mechanisms around them which include less reliance on profit.
He said there would be more emphasis on a production based regime which provides for more consistent flow of revenues.
"We just need simple arrangements, arrangements which will provide more surety of flow, arrangements that when commodity prices are slow don't necessarily mean all revenue disappears.
"It means obviously a decline in revenue but we maintain some sort of consistency of flows to government. Because without those flows we can't continue to consistently invest into education and health and so on."
He said the government was continuing to refine the system to generate revenue flows so that it can provide the adequate level of investment needed to provide basic services across PNG.
"So today, we don't have the road and transport network, we don't have the power network, we don't have the communication network in country.
"We continue to struggle with governance arrangements, procurement arrangements and so on, it's inefficient, we have corruption issues," he explained.
"No one is denying these things. We're not there yet. We're a long way from it."
However, Mr Abel said PNG was heading in the right direction with moves such as empowering PNG through provisions such as competitive communication and power costs, and he claimed related regulation environments were improving too.
The Treasurer suggested education and health services would be improved as the government's revenue base was broadened and the fiscal systems made more efficient, which he described as a work in progress.
