News and Public Notices

The Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG) has reaffirmed its commitment to strengthening partnerships with development partners and the National Government, calling for a more coordinated and transparent approach to delivering development programs for Bougainville’s long-term growth.

Speaking during the 2025 Bougainville Development Cooperation Conference in Port Moresby, Acting Deputy Secretary Operations and Secretary for Community Government, Mrs. Belinda-Maree Gara-Lanbong, presented the ABG’s new Development Cooperation Framework. The Framework outlines Bougainville’s sectoral priorities and proposes a structured coordination mechanism for development partner support.

Deputy Secretary Lanbong emphasized Bougainville’s Vision 2052 — to become a high-income, healthy, educated, peaceful, and sovereign nation — and stressed the importance of aligning all development efforts with this goal.

“We aim to build a Bougainville that stands on its own feet. For this, we need our development partners to work with us in a coordinated, transparent, and results-driven way, ensuring that every Kina spent makes a meaningful difference for our people,” Mrs. Lanbong said.

Mrs. Lanbong said the ABG is also seeking to explore various delivery modalities for development assistance and welcomes opportunities to collaborate with development partners in this space.

“We are open to working with our partners through different modalities such as co-financing mutually agreed priorities, public-private partnerships, budgetary support to help fill our fiscal gaps, grants, and performance-based financing. These approaches will not only help us deliver priority impact projects but also strengthen our systems and processes in planning, budgeting, and managing development programs,” she stated.

This call from Bougainville was also reinforced by a presentation from the Department of National Planning and Monitoring, which outlined key findings from the review of PNG’s previous Development Cooperation Policy 2018–2022.

The findings confirmed the need to improve cross-agency coordination, build integrated data systems to guide planning and track results, and strengthen stakeholder engagement during policy formulation. They also emphasized the need to review and modernize relevant legislation and promote the consistent use of national coordination mechanisms by all development partners.

These lessons have shaped the formulation of PNG’s new Development Cooperation Framework, which will be deliberately concise, action-oriented, and designed to strengthen ownership, coherence, and practical implementation at all levels of government. The Department of National Planning reaffirmed that under this new framework, PNG will assert full authority over its development agenda, ensuring that every partnership project and dollar serves the country’s national and sub-national priorities — a position that directly supports Bougainville’s call for greater alignment and partnership-based delivery.

The ABG also presented current challenges limiting Bougainville’s development progress, including slow internal revenue growth, under-dispersed grants from the National Government, and uncoordinated partner support.

To address this, the ABG is proposing the establishment of new coordination structures, such as an Inter-Government Projects Committee, Tri-Partite Working Groups involving the ABG, the National Government, and Development Partners, and a unified aid database, to improve transparency and monitoring.

Deputy Secretary Lanbong also outlined Bougainville’s key sectoral priorities for partner support, including major investments in transport infrastructure, energy projects, education, policy and legislative development, land and utilities, the Panguna mine project, and capacity building within government systems.

“We have a clear list of priority impact projects, and we are inviting our partners to align their support to these priorities so that we can deliver tangible outcomes for our people,” she said.

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