Who exactly is a landowner?

The broad policy of the Papua New Guinea Government is for landowners to participate meaningfully in the development of their resources and to enable equitable benefits to all stakeholders.

Unlike many countries throughout the world, land and resources in which the land hold are owned by the people in accordance with their respective customs.

Of the total land mass in PNG, 97 percent is owned by landowners. And hence, landowners play an important role in the development of any resource, including forestry.

In forestry, in the case of a timber project in a Forest Management Agreement (FMA) area, landowners who have incorporated their land group pursuant to the Land Incorporation Act and signed the FMA to transfer their timber rights for the state to find a reputable developer to develop the timber resource, are the landowners of that particular timber area.

Monetary benefits from the project flow down through the respective land groups in the form of royalty premiums.

Forestry related opportunities for landowners

Landowners have always been constrained by finance and expertise to venture into big timber operations.

The TA-01 which allows for 5,000 cubic metres to be extracted annually provides the opportunity for landowners to participate in the management and utilization of their forest resources. Under the Forestry Legislation, landowners are also allowed to extract less than 500 cubic metres for their own consumption.

In big timber operations where landowners are limited by finance and expertise, they benefit from royalty payments, contract activities on various aspects of the project, premium payments, spin off business activities as well as infrastructure benefits.

Registering your interest in developing/harvesting/processing forest resources

Timber Authority Projects

Developing of timber resource under the Timber Authority arrangement is only for small scale operations. A Timber Authority (TA) can only be issued on areas that is outside of an existing Forest Management Agreement.

This is a good opportunity for landowners to participate and manage their timber operations.

Timber Authorities can be granted only for five specific purposes and these are:

1)      TA-01: harvesting of less than 5,000 cubic metres annually of   
 timber for domestic processing;
 

2)      TA-02: harvesting of timber for road line clearance;

3)     TA-03: harvesting of timber for clearing in preparation for agriculture or other land use;

4)      TA-04: harvesting of forest produce other than timber; and

5)      TA-05: harvesting of timber in plantation area.

Logs harvested under Timber Authority are not allowed to be exported in log form except for those that are harvested in a road line clearance (TA-02), site preparation for an agriculture project (TA-03) and those harvested in forest plantations (TA-05) if they are not banned for export in log form.