The inaugural SME Digital Innovative Awards HAS been launched to recognise achievements of Papua New Guinea businesses contributing to digital innovation.
The awards is the result of a partnership between ExxonMobil PNG Limited and the IBBM Enterprise Centre. The 2018 SME Digital Innovation Awards will be presented at the PNG APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC) Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) Summit. It will focus on SMEs that utilise digital technology innovation as part of their processes, or that provide a service using technology. Awards will be presented across three categories including micro, small and medium enterprises. ExxonMobil PNG Managing Director, Andrew Barry, said ExxonMobil PNG is committed to recognising and encouraging SMEs that use technology platforms to continue evolving in an ever-growing digital world. Award winners will be announced at the ABAC MSME Summit being held in Port Moresby from 10 – 11 September 2018. Winners will receive training provided by the IBBM Enterprise Centre and equipment to support future digital endeavors. Finalists from the 2018 SME Digital Innovation Award will be nominated as finalists in the 2019 IBBM Biennial SME Awards under the digital innovation category.
The inaugural SME Digital Innovative Awards HAS been launched to recognise achievements of Papua New Guinea businesses contributing to digital innovation.
The awards is the result of a partnership between ExxonMobil PNG Limited and the IBBM Enterprise Centre. The 2018 SME Digital Innovation Awards will be presented at the PNG APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC) Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) Summit. It will focus on SMEs that utilise digital technology innovation as part of their processes, or that provide a service using technology. Awards will be presented across three categories including micro, small and medium enterprises. ExxonMobil PNG Managing Director, Andrew Barry, said ExxonMobil PNG is committed to recognising and encouraging SMEs that use technology platforms to continue evolving in an ever-growing digital world. Award winners will be announced at the ABAC MSME Summit being held in Port Moresby from 10 – 11 September 2018. Winners will receive training provided by the IBBM Enterprise Centre and equipment to support future digital endeavors. Finalists from the 2018 SME Digital Innovation Award will be nominated as finalists in the 2019 IBBM Biennial SME Awards under the digital innovation category.
PAPUA NEW GUINEA INTERNATIONAL GARRY LO HAS BEEN RELEASED BY CASTLEFORD AFTER MAKING JUST ONE APPEARANCE FOR THE BETFRED SUPER LEAGUE CLUB.
The 24-year-old winger joined the Tigers in the close season on a two-year contract from Betfred Championship club Sheffield Eagles and made his debut against Wigan Warriors in April.
Lo was stood down by Castleford five days later, on the eve of what would have been his home debut, after it emerged that he was voluntarily assisting police with an inquiry.
Now the player has requested to be released from his contract with immediate effect and the club have agreed.
Yesterday the club received a request from Garry Lo’s representative to be released from his contract with the club to allow him to focus on a personal matter. The club has agreed to this. There will be no further comment from the Club.
In a brief statement, Castleford said: “Today the club received a request from Garry Lo’s representative to be released from his contract with the club to allow him to focus on a personal matter.“The club has agreed to this. There will be no further comment from the club.
”Lo, who was in the Papua New Guinea team that lost to England in the 2017 World Cup quarter-final in Melbourne last November, began the 2018 season on loan with his old club Sheffield, for whom he scored 33 tries in 28 Championship matches in 2017.
Castleford have dropped Papua New Guinea winger Garry Lo after revealing that he is helping police with an inquiry.
Castleford Tigers winger, Garry Lo (right).
The 24-year-old made his Betfred Super League debut in the Tigers’ 28-12 defeat at Wigan last Friday and would have been in line to make his home bow in Friday’s derby against Wakefield. Castleford say they have stood the player down but did not go into further details. A statement from the Tigers said: “The club understands from speaking with Garry Lo that he is voluntarily assisting the police with an inquiry. Garry will be stood down for selection today, for Friday’s game. This is not an admission of wrongdoing but simply to ensure that Garry is able to cooperate fully with the inquiry and to ensure the best interests of everyone, including Garry, are maintained.
“There will be no further comment at this stage from the club or player.” Lo, who played for his country in the 2017 World Cup, joined Castleford on a two-year contract from Sheffield Eagles last September after scoring 33 tries in 28 Championship matches last season. He returned to the Eagles on loan at the start of the 2018 season but stepped into the side in the absence of James Clare with a fractured tibia. Clare is set for a two-month lay-off, and stand-off Ben Roberts (calf) and forwards Alex Foster (calf) and Nathan Massey (shoulder) will also miss Friday’s game due to injury. Coach Daryl Powell is set to recall second-row forward Jesse Sene-Lefao after a six-week injury absence while academy player Calum Turner gets a first call-up.
An 11th hour attempt by Finance Minster James Marape to have the petition against him dismissed just before commencement of trial at the Waigani National Court was thrown out yesterday by the court.
Mr Marape’s lawyer, Robert Leo, through an application, had asked the court to dismiss the petition on the basis of a ground not pursued at the objection to competency hearing.
Trial judge Justice David Cannings and lawyer acting for the petitioner Jonny Pokaya, Justin Haiara, were taken aback, describing the move as an “ambush” and “extraordinary” respectively.
The grounds related to alleged non compliance of Form One of the Election Petition rules and section 208 of the Organic Law on National and Local Level Government Elections on the part of the petitioner’s attesting witnesses.
Justice Cannings said it was bad practice to keep a ground in “reserve” and only use it at trial after Mr Leo was unsuccessful to have the Supreme Court review Justice Cannings lower court decision of March 13 that threw out the objection challenging the competency of the petition.
That decision struck out 10 of the 13 grounds of the petition and allowed only three bribery and undue influence allegations to proceed to trial starting yesterday.
The judge agreed with Mr Hairara’s counter submission that the proper way would have been for Mr Leo to seek leave to vary the earlier court orders and file a new notice of objection.
However, having granted Mr Leo leave to make submission on the issue, Justice Canings had to make a ruling in which he said that the petition generally and substantially complied with the Rules and the Organic law.
The other relief Mr Leo sought in the application for Justice Cannings to reconsider his own March 13 decision was also rejected as there was no “obvious errors,” the judge said.
Last year PNG legend David Mead named Nixon Putt as one of the Hunters he anticipated would eventually bang on the door of the NRL.
Yet, after a challenging start to the 2018 season for the reigning premiers, 22-year-old Putt is focusing on team goals first.
In a recent interview with QRL.com.au, Putt said that ‘nerves’ were partly to blame for the Hunters being slow out of the blocks.
“A lot of people may not realise that we’ve had quite a lot of players step up from local PNG clubs to Intrust Super Cup this year,” said 175cm, 95kg Putt.
“They’ve only recently come into the coaching system.
“You could tell through some of the opening games that there were players who were nervous.”
Heading into Sunday’s Kokoda Cup game against Burleigh – a regular fixture of Anzac week in the Intrust Super Cup – the Hunters are in 11th spot.
With two wins and five losses from seven starts, they are in a bottom four, where only points differential separates them from Wynnum Manly, Tweed Heads and Mackay.
Meanwhile, Burleigh is charging ahead as one of the pacesetters in the competition, winning all but one encounter to date in 2018.
The Pizzey Park showdown will pit Putt against World Cup teammate Luke Page, who will captain the Burleigh side.
Putt made one appearance at the World Cup – a 64-0 victory against the USA.
“I learnt a lot from Pagey, from Kurt Baptiste, James Segeyaro, Nene Macdonald and David Mead when we were in camp for the World Cup,” Putt said.
“For David Mead to come out and say what he did (that he was “excited” to see Putt in action) was a real confidence booster to me.
“And Pagey is the most fun guy that I know. He’s into his music and was always dancing to rap artists.
“We were under a lot of pressure in front of big crowds at the World Cup, but having someone like Pagey kept it fun.”
Last week’s 20-12 loss to Souths Logan was Putt’s 30th Intrust Super Cup game, meaning that he can no longer be considered a fresh addition.
In fact, with the loss of experience in the Hunters’ squad, his international stripes make him somewhat of a leader among the team.
This season he has averaged a respectable 102.6 in running metres per game, but is coming off his least productive performance (54m v Souths Logan) of the current campaign.
His best was against the competition’s other Gold Coast team, when he punched out 163m against Tweed Heads.
Bank of PNG is testing a solar digital device that needs no internet link to provide blockchain-based financial services to folks with no bank account.
Blockchain is a word that is now bandied around with alarming regularity, so when Papua New Guinea (PNG) became the latest country to be associated with it, there were plenty of skeptics. Contrary to naysayers’ expectations, PNG is exploring how to use blockchain to viably address some of the country’s economic issues. Loi Bakani, Governor of the Bank Of Papua New Guinea, has been vocal about blockchain trials currently underway in partnership with the Australian government-funded PNG Governance Facility and also Abt Associates, an organization working on poverty relief.
According to Abt Associates, the majority of the population in PNG lack access to banking, while mobile-phone penetration is approximately 50%, making blockchain a possible solution to people with limited access to financial services.
“Some of it is noise and some real, but the big proponent of blockchain is actually the Bank of PNG. The governor is interested in financial inclusion and 85% of the population are ‘unbanked’, so he has been keen to try and examine how blockchain is going to help them with the issue,” Jane Thomason, the chief executive of Abt Associates-Australia told Asia Times.
The Bank of PNG also sees blockchain as an ideal way to provide a legal identity for the ‘unbanked’ and the trials with Abt Associates and the Australian government are on a project that aims to create an inexpensive solar-powered digital fingerprint device that could power blockchain-based banking.
The idea is that the device will upload biometric data of a person onto a blockchain and this will allow them to withdraw money without it having to be connected to a power grid or even the internet.
The device, made byIDboxonly has to rely on an “individual’s access to a basic analog mobile phone and has the potential to work in areas where there is no electricity, no internet and no smartphones,” its makers say.
It seems an incredible example of how blockchain might be used to further financial inclusion in an area that has complex infrastructure issues. But is it pie in the sky?
“We have taken that to the point where there is a working prototype, it’s been demonstrated that it can work. There is an interest, but whether there is funding or not is to be determined. The bank would like to roll it out into a much bigger pilot,” Thomason adds.
Abt Associates has identified several issues that could be alleviated using blockchain. These include confirming legal identities, land registration and digitization of assets through smart contracts, promoting transparency, and preventing the leakage of funds from the ‘unbanked’.
“PNG is also leading discussions on how to breach the digital divide among APEC economies. They are trying to see if this is something that can solve some of the pretty big problems surrounding lack of connectivity,” Thomason adds.
Sydney businessmen the Elomar brothers were busy in 2014.
Mamdouh Elomar was publicly decrying the actions of his son Mohamed, an Islamic State fighter in Syria who would go on to be photographed holding severed heads.The Elomar brothers in Papua New Guinea
Mamdouh was also vying for Iraqi construction contracts with his brother Ibrahim, arranging a $US1 million bribe for which they would both be jailed last year.
But the pair struck another deal that year, paying $6 million for a logging company only to end up negotiating a $9 million payment from the previous owners after a dispute.
The case, now before the courts, involves the forests of Papua New Guinea and a development fund meant to help lift locals out of poverty.
And it hinges on claims that another businessman stole more than $10 million in assets belonging to the Papua New Guinean people.
Mamdouh, 64, and Ibrahim, 61, were raised in Lebanon in a family of 12 children and worked manual jobs in Australia before building a large construction company, Lifese.
The firm counted a former Supreme Court judge as its chairman and completed projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
In time, though, the Elomar brothers became better known for the extremist activities of their relatives.
Mamdouh’s brother Mohamed Ali Elomar is serving 21 years’ jail for his role in planning attempted terrorist attacks in Melbourne and Sydney in 2005.
Mamdouh’s son Ahmed was jailed for four years for assaulting a policeman at the 2012 riots in Sydney’s Hyde Park, after carrying a sign that said “our dead are in paradise, your dead are in hell”.
Then his son Mohamed, formerly a promising boxer, travelled to Syria to become one of Australia’s most infamous IS fighters, before he was killed in an airstrike in 2015.
Terrorism headlines were hurting the Lifese business in 2014, shrinking revenue.
But the Elomars found money in February that year to buy a timber operation called Cloudy Bay from the PNG Sustainable Development Program, a charitable trust part-run by Australians.
Managing $US1.3 billion in assets, PNG SDP funds local development projects with proceeds from the Ok Tedi mine that was once owned by BHP, which handed over its stake in return for immunity from environmental lawsuits.
“We commit ourselves to improving the quality of life of the people of Western Province,” the program says on its website.
The Elomars were joined by another Australian, 25 per cent shareholder Nick Roniotis, in buying the Cloudy Bay timber operation – including logging permits, production plants and a commercial building in Port Moresby – for 40 million kina, about $17 million at the time.
They paid $6.5 million up front, but then defaulted on the rest.
As they faced charges over the bribery in Iraq, the Elomars were negotiating hard over the PNG business to strike a new and unusual deal.
It would have allowed them to keep control of the company while receiving millions of dollars more than they ended up paying for it.
The deal, signed last February, was meant to put an end to a murky dispute.
PNG SDP could have taken back all of the timber operations’ assets, but it decided to forgive the $11 million debt in return for the Port Moresby property alone.
On top of this, PNG SDP said it would pay the Elomars’ company $9 million.
Once the property was transferred back to the development program and the money paid, both sides would relinquish any right to sue over the initial sale.
The deal was fair, according to PNG SDP’s Australian chief executive John Wylie, because it compensated the Elomars for a massive theft on the timber operation.
A former public servant and management consultant, Mr Wylie said the theft was committed by someone working within the development fund before the sale to the Elomars and was only discovered later.
“Physical assets” were allegedly stolen and funds siphoned off to pay for personal expenses, including school fees in Australia.
“The validated quantum of the theft was much more than $9 million,” he said.
The alleged thief, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has been reported to an anti-corruption body in Singapore, where the company was incorporated, Mr Wylie said.
“The PNG authorities are in the process of being informed,” he said. “This is being done carefully through lawyers and has yet to be fully executed.”
Deeds sighted by The Sun-Herald refer not to a theft but “disputes” between the buyer and seller.
Asked why the $9 million payment was to go to the Elomars personally, not the Cloudy Bay company, Mr Wylie said Cloudy Bay had given a written executed authority for it.
“How they divvied up the spoils, as it were – we didn’t want to get involved in that. None of our business.”
The deal has yet to go through.
The Elomars’ former business partner, Mr Roniotis, claimed he was cut out of the $9 million payment. He launched action in PNG’s National Court of Justice to have the sum paid to the timber company, not the Elomars’ venture.
Mr Roniotis also questioned the idea of compensation for a theft, saying he and the Elomars conducted due diligence on the company before buying it and found nothing untoward.
His lawyer, Stewart Levitt, has questioned the negotiations between PNG SDP and the Elomars, who at the time had been facing foreign bribery charges for more than a year.
“It would be extraordinary for the trustees of a public trust to want to continue to do business with people known to be facing serious criminal charges which had been widely reported,” Mr Levitt said.
The Elomars, who pleaded guilty to the Iraq bribery last July, will be first eligible for release in September next year. Their lawyer at the time of the PNG deal negotiations, Abdul Reslan, did not return calls.
The establishment of PNG SDP and environmental damage from the Ok Tedi mine is now under investigation after PNG Prime Minister Peter O’Neill announced a public inquiry in parliament this month.
OFC president David Chung shakes hands with Auckland football players ahead of the OFC President’s Cup match in November 2014.
An Auckland football project at the centre of a Fifa investigation was delivered two years late and more than $10 million over budget – and it’s still only half complete.
Fifa’s Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) president David Chung quit last week after an audit into OFC’s Home of Football project, being built in the Auckland suburb of St Johns, triggered an investigation into “potential wrongdoings”.
The Serious Fraud Office has been made aware of the audit but would not comment further.
Work has stalled on stage two of the Home of Football, five years after the project started first started.
The project, paid for by Fifa, was to be built in two stages. The first has been completed and includes two artificial football turfs, changing room facilities and flood lights.
The second stage, which has not been built, was to include a multi-million dollar building with meeting rooms, offices for up to 100 people, a fitness centre, cafe, seating for 2000 people and an indoor sports facility.
OFC, which includes New Zealand and other football-playing nations in the Pacific, is seeking a 30-year lease on the site at Ngahue Reserve on College Rd, conditional on Auckland Council and Ōrākei Local Board approval, which had not yet been granted.
Ōrākei Local Board deputy chairman Kit Parkinson said the project, built on an old landfill, had not cost ratepayers a cent.
Auckland Council ordered a stop to work in December after OFC failed to gain consent, Parkinson said.
Parkinson said other than some foundation work, nothing had been done on stage two.
“There’s basically nothing there.”
The centre was intended to be a public facility 70 per cent of the time and available for OFC to use 30 per cent of the time.
Auckland councillor Desley Simpson, who was Ōrākei Local Board chairwoman during early negotiations with OFC, said in 2013 stage one of the project was estimated to cost $5.3m.
Simpson said Auckland Council figures supplied to her said OFC’s 2016 financial report had costs to date of $12.8m for stage one and $3.1m for stage two, giving a total of $15.9m.
The report was not available on OFC’s website.
The project was due to be completed in 2016, OFC said.
In light of the audit, commissioned by Fifa and conducted by PWC, OFC had appointed an external lawyer to lead an investigation into “potential wrongdoings and to take legal action”, if required, it said.
In the project’s early stages Fifa had agreed to fund up to $13.3m with $6.7m coming from OFC.
Chung was the president of OFC since the project started.
Simpson said OFC had been difficult to deal with and its relationship with Auckland Council had been “tense”.
The local board only agreed to the development unless it got exactly what it wanted, which was a community asset, she said.
However, OFC tried to change the terms of use after the project was underway. In particular it wanted more use of the field, which overlapped into community use time, she said.
THE National Executive Council (NEC) has approved the National Energy Policy.
With the motto of “Harnessing Energy for Life” and covering all aspects of the energy sector, the main objective of the policy is to deliver electricity services for economic growth and rural development.
Minister for Communication and Information Technology and Energy Sam Basil said electricity in the country has only reached 13 per cent and successive governments have ignored the importance of an energy policy which drives the development and utilisation of our renewable natural energy sources.
“Energy policy which fully utilises our renewable energy resources to provide the energy needs of our people and the economy is well overdue. Indeed it has taken more than 40 years since independence for such a policy to be adopted for our country.
“The new policy provides for development and utilisation of these sources of energy, including hydro, solar, wind, biomass, biogas, ocean, coal, geothermal and downstream petroleum products to generate power.
“Specific sub-sector policies will be developed to ensure that each source of energy is given appropriate government attention in realising its potential in meeting the energy needs of our country and even exporting some of our energy overseas,” Mr Basil said.
He said this policy sets the roadmap for reforms in the energy sector including the electricity services industry, setting in place new institutional and regulatory arrangements, to harness the full economic potential of our natural energy resources.
“The new policy also establishes a licensing system for supply of electricity by undertakers in generation, transmission, distribution and retailing of power to the consumers. Review of legislation is necessary to ensure there is no conflict of laws in the implementation of it.
“Legislation is required to ensure that power supply through main power grids and off-grid systems are operated under appropriate laws on level playing fields and in accordance with international standards,” Mr Basil said.
Further reforms through the new policy will result in the transmission, distribution and retailing of power supply markets open for competition.
A new tariff system will be introduced for power supply generated from renewable energy sources. Appropriate tariff and possibly other incentives for each renewable energy source is vital for encouraging the development of each renewable energy source.
