By Simon Keslep in Port Moresby
The 166 donated vehicles used during last year’s Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference in Papua New Guinea have been distributed to government institutions, non-governmental organisations and churches.
They were handed over by the Department of Finance in Port Moresby last Friday.
Present to officially handover vehicle keys to recipients was Minister for Finance and Rural Development Charles Abel and Finance Secretary Dr Ken Ngangan.
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The vehicles were donated to the Papua New Guinea government by the governments of China and Japan.
“As part of the process of disposing of assets acquired for APEC, we are starting with the vehicles given, they are of high value. The disposal will not only include vehicles but all assets that were purchased by the APEC authority,” said Dr Ngangan.
“It has taken us a long time but the process that we going through are done transparently so to account for all assets purchased.”
Dr Ngangan said all these was submitted to the Finance Minister and then to the attention of the National Procurement Commission for endorsement of disposal of donated assets.
Public assets
He said the process of disposal follows under the Procurement Act and the Public Finance Management Act complies with disposal requirements.
“The Department of Finance is the department responsible for the disposal of public assets and we have now taken ownership of all assets purchased by the APEC Authority.
The next process will include the state-purchased assets which is about 321 in total,” he said.
“After that we will provide a full report and submit to our Finance Minister, and to the National Executive Council, National Procurement Commission board and other oversight agencies like Ombudsman Commission and to everyone including the general public.”
Simon Keslep is a PNG Post-Courier journalist.
