Kevin Nyango
TechInPacific – The Papua New Guinea Prime Minister, Peter O’Neill expects the Asia-Pacific community to look more into infrastructure so that it will generate inclusive growth of digital access in the nation.
He said that all of the APEC members have currently enlarged their digital access and looked forward to the private sector to investing more on this to drive more innovations. Furthermore, digital technology is a tool for an inclusive economy, according to APEC members.
During his speech at the annual meeting of APEC Economic Leaders in Port Moresby on the last Friday, the Prime Minister highlighted several key points, including: PNG as the host of APEC 2018; Investment in APEC, the more inclusive society, Multilateral Trading System that based on the rules; Digital Revolution among many other key points.
The APEC Economic Leaders’ meeting this year focused on trade and economic collaboration in the region of Asia-Pacific, benefiting from new technology innovations to uncover more digital access in “vulnerable” sectors and allowing them to participate in the economy.
“While free trade is vital, this alone will not deliver the sustained and the wider economic development that we aspire to. Policies must be aimed at improving productivity, raising low and middle-income levels so that we are able to make a better standard of living for our people,” the Prime Minister, O’Neill said on his speech.
In terms of investments in the digital access infrastructure, O’Neill said that it should be reliable, efficient, and low-cost.
“In Papua New Guinea, our government is leading the way in encouraging investment infrastructure that will facilitate digital access, especially by small to medium enterprises and our business community,” O’Neill said.
“There should be no space for digital divide, on whatever grounds that divide may be generated,” he added, “be it be gender, ethnic groupings, education or where the person lives,” added O’Neill.
