Prime Minister Hon. James Marape has commended Papua New Guinea’s Small-to-Medium Enterprises (SME) sector for taking on downstream processing in the country.

He said this after visiting and seeing displays of products and offers of services, including processed agricultural products, at the SME Fair at APEC House today.

“Our government’s vision is to see downstream processing in agriculture and in all our resource sectors, and to finally replace imports where we can.

“This is something that is very close to my heart.

“This morning I walked through the aisles and was happy to see our local SME boot displaying products and services, specially agriculture products. “This approach by a number of our SMEs to process their raw materials into finished products themselves is highly commendable,” he said.

He said Papua New Guinea spends between two to three billion kina every year to import food, therefore must begin to work at replacing some of these imports with its own locally-processed food.

“We are still importing meat. Why? This is why I have appointed a livestock minister to address this area.”

The Prime Minister encouraged SME owners, farmers and those in the agriculture sector to continue their work and pledged more government support, urging SMEs to work with Government to grow these businesses and downstream processing further in the country.

PM Marape was addressing the 6th Annual SME Breakfast at APEC House in Port Moresby this morning (27/06/24).