Prime Minister Hon. James Marape has welcomed newly-appointed Asian Development Bank (ADB) Papua New Guinea Country Director, Takafumi Kadono, to his new role in the country.

Mr Kadono made a courtesy call on the Prime Minister at his office at Melanesian House, Port Moresby, where the Prime Minister expressed his well-wishes and reaffirmed the long-standing partnership between PNG and ADB.

“On behalf of our government, I want to thank ADB for your continuous support to and partnership with Papua New Guinea to build our economy despite many challenges,” said the Prime Minister.

ADB is one of PNG’s longest-standing, largest multilateral development partners. It began its work in PNG in 1971 and in 2003, opened a resident mission office in Port Moresby to directly facilitate its operations in the country.

Prime Minister Marape used the opportunity of the meeting to highlight to Mr Kadono his government’s work to date and the work already done in partner- ship with ADB.

He reiterated his resolve to grow the PNG economy to K200 billion; his government focus on education in the recently-approved K11 billion 10-year upgrade program; the ongoing work on strengthening the police and judiciary; improvements in health; infrastructure development covering roads, power sup- ply, water and telecommunications; efforts going into strengthening the operations of State-owned enterprises; as well as work beginning on introducing Artificial Intelligence into governance and the Public Service.

Prime Minister Marape also voiced his plans to legally convert Papua New Guinean customary-owned land into bankable assets so PNG families could get more practical value from their land; provided a brief on the PNG mining and petroleum sector with up to 10 mines lined up for opening or re-opening over the next 10 years; and highlighted his resolve to direct up to 7 percent of earnings from each of these national projects into a Sovereign Wealth Fund for PNG.

PM Marape also took the time to acknowledge ADB for the work carried out in Education in the Technical Vocational Education Training (TVET) space in partnership with the bank, as well as for national infrastructure development pro- jects concluded or nearing conclusion, such as the upgrade of national air ports in the country including the Nadzab Tomodachi airport to international status.

He said in line with the country’s economic recovery plan, PNG was on track to pull back from borrowing in 2027, and projected even further to 2047 when he said PNG would be in a position to participate within ADB membership as a donor and not as a borrower.

“There will be on no more borrowing in 2027 as we come back to a balanced budget. We will start to repay all our borrowings into 2030s until such a time when we bring our debt-to-GDP under 30 percent,” said Prime Minister Marape.

Mr Kadono, in turn, reiterated ADB’s growing focus on Papua New Guinea and the Pacific, saying the development partner wants increased field presence and would like to expand its partnership into agriculture by helping PNG up- grade its fresh fruits space to find markets, and improve the global value chain for its commodities.

The new country director will now be in charge of overseeing the formulation and implementation of ADB’s new country partnership strategy for PNG and wider engagement in the country.

Mr Kadono is a national of Japan and has more than 26 years of professional experience in international development with13 years in ADB. He was appointed to his new position in January this year, 2026.