The Minister for International Trade and Investment will be heading back to Indonesia in three week’s time along with a delegation including the Deputy Prime Minister, to talk investments in downstream processing. Minister Richard Maru in an interview with PNG HAUSBUNG revealed that this next trip will include the heads of State own Enterprises like PNG Power Limited, Kumul Mineral Holdings Limited and Kumul Petroleum Holdings Limited, to gain insight into Indonesian companies engaged in downstream processing in their own country and secure their investments in Papua New Guinea (PNG), so to establish downstream processing facilities in the country. “We will return (to Indonesia) in three weeks’ time to look at possible business opportunities between Indonesia State owned companies in the mining and petroleum sector who are particularly involved in downstream processing of all their raw materials from gold to nickel,” said Minister Maru. Minister Maru said the recent trip to Indonesia was a successful one as it exposed the Papua New Guinea delegation to the successes of the Indonesian companies in downstream processing. “That’s the part they’ve already gone, and we can learn a lot from them, and we want to make sure we go back in three weeks time and visit the mines, visit the operations of those companies and see how we can invite them to come in, secure licenses in PNG and become joint venture partners with us.” Minister Maru added that although PNG’s partners like Australia have investments in the country, full scale downstream processing in both the resource sector and agriculture sector is not one of those investments they engage in, instead its all about extracting raw materials and sending them away overseas. “We no longer want to do that, its not only in the mining and petroleum space, but also in other sectors including agriculture and fisheries, forestry. We need to go down this path.” “It's a whole of government approach, we are going to downstream processing, creating industries and jobs for our citizens. We have a lot of unemployed youths; we need to find employment for them,” he stated. Maru said PNG needs to learn a lot from Indonesia and he is excited about their keenness to assist PNG to go the path Indonesia follows, which has helped to build a strong economy for them. “Right now, there is no big Indonesian company who is an investor in Papua New Guinea. We are hoping that before the end of the year, we will have some decisions to have major joint ventures between Indonesian companies, not only in mining and petroleum space, but in fisheries and agriculture.” “We need to now work on that by going back to Indonesia and look at some arrangements so that in discussion with them, we make sure to have these agreements and announcements by September this year.