State to consider transfer of assets to pay NSL

By MATTHEW VARI

Sunday, November 6, 2016 (Sunday Chronicle, PNG) 

WITH the money plan handed down for 2017, the issue of outstanding K2.1 billion owed to public servants by the government through the Superannuation Fund, see an allocation for K272 million for 2017.

The amount in no way pays for the huge outstanding claimed by the superfund, however, secretary for treasury Dairi Vele maintain that two lots of payment were due to NSL.

“There are two payments that are due. One is the exit payment for the current ongoing one, and one is a backlog of payments that we inherited, which is a very big number.”

“If we had to pay that very big number off then we would have any money to do anything else.”

“So what we are going to do is that we fund the bills that we need to pay right now, when our people leave this year and next year they need to make sure that their Nambawan Super is available to them,” Secretary Vele said.

He said in relation to the big one, the national government is working together with Nambawan Super to verify the exact number.

“They say its two point something billion (K2.1 billion) and we say it K1.8 something billion we just need to work together, do an audit and get to that number and then we need to work out how we actually fund it.”

“One we can do it with cash payments. The other we can give them some of our assets. You know we own Telekom, we own PNG Power, and it makes sense for them to take some of our assets for that. So the strategies are in place.”

“I think after the next couple of days we are going to take some time off go and sit down with them, get someone independent so that we don’t argue over the number.”

“They will go through that make sure that we get a number and that will go towards some of the discussions that we are having, on both sides we are reluctant to talk about some of the options and we haven’t even confirmed the number that’s there.”