Transcript
The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative Report 2016 and the Oakland Institute Report 2018 confirm that huge increases in mining and logging have not seen a matching increase in tax revenue.
A civil society spokesperson Priscilla Kare says both reports confirm tax evasion amounting to hundreds of millions of Kina every year, which is money lost to the PNG economy.
"The income derived in turn for Papua New Guinea is minimal, insignificant and totally disproportionate to the total value of raw exports that leave our shores."
Ms Kare says logging and mining's largest contribution to national income is from tax on wages, a third 34 percent of which is paid by employees.
She says the reports show corporate income-tax rates work out at 6 percent because of the low reported income compared to the high value and volumes exported.
PNG's corporate income tax rate is 30 percent for local companies and 48 percent for foreign ones operating in the country.
The Oakland Institute is a progressive US think-tank which subtitled its report - The Great Timber Heist, Continued.
Its author Frederic Mousseau says despite PNG becoming the world's largest exporter of tropical timber, it is losing tax revenue through various forms of avoidance by the almost entirely foreign owned and controlled industry.
"For several years exports between three million and four million cubic metres every year by these logging companies mostly going to China and these companies who are plundering Papua New Guinea and making people destitute and dispossessed of their own land and resources are not even contributing to the public revenue and to the economy of the country."
Mr Mousseau says the industry convinces many people it is operating for the benefit of the country.
But he says the increase in logging exports has largely been made possible by illegally granted Special Agriculture and Business Leases, or SABLs.
An anti-corruption activist Pamela Avusi highlights what she calls the fraudulent land grabs in her area of West Pomio.
"The landowners are left suffering. Their land was taken away from them for 99 years without their consent. And to get their land back they're still battling these in court."
The executive director of PNG's Institute of National Affairs, Paul Barker, says illegality in logging is nothing new.
He says legislation was introduced in the late 1970's to empower the landowners and encourage sustainable forest management that would produce ongoing revenue for PNG and its people but 30 years on he says corruption still reigns.
"We constantly see the power and that growing power of the industry to have very strong influence, sometimes in the highest places, to circumvent the efforts to be able to manage the industry responsibly, accountably for as I say the landowners best interests."
PNG's civil society spokesperson Priscilla Kare says they are petitioning the government for action.
She cites Malaysian company Rimbunan Hijau, which has doubled its financial loss over six years while increasing its exports by 40 percent, as the worst offender.
Civil Society is calling on the prime minister, the National Executive Council, the Internal Revenue Commission and other state agencies to treat this matter with grave concern and urgency.
