Malaita’s cash flow problem was made worse by lack of payment of revenue expected from logging companies, premier Edwin Suibaea says.
He clarified this during an interview with the Solomon Star this week.
Mr Suibaea said logging companies operating in the province owed Malaita a significant amount of revenue.
It’s understood loggers were unable to pay their dues to the province because of recent policies by the three commercial banks in Honiara not to accept loggers as their customers.
Mr Suibaea said a significant portion of the province’s revenue comes from logging companies operating in the province.
These are in the forms of licence fees.
He said Malaita is not the only province affected by the loggers’ predicament.
“Other provinces are experiencing the same problem with logging companies operating there,” he said.
Meanwhile, he said Malaita is a big province and demanding in terms of services.
He said that getting new qualified people to work in the province is what he’s looking at, adding a redundancy exercise had already taken place.
“These are some of the factors that also affected our cash flow situation because we have to meet redundancy packages of those affected.”
By STEPHEN DI’ISANGO
in Auki
