Parliament Passes Historic Trade Defense Bill 2026

The Anti-Dumping and Countervailing Measures Bill 2026 and Safeguard Measures Bill 2026 were presented by the Minister for International Trade and Investment, Hon. Richard Maru.

“These two legislations are complementary in nature and therefore will be developed and implemented together. The main purpose is to provide administrative procedures and legislative intervention measures consistent with our international commitments and best practices for Government to deal with potential threat or injury to local manufacturing industries and support SME development against unfair treatment from external competitions,” he said.

The Minister said once the Bill was passed and ratified, the legislations would be implemented by the National Trade Office (NTO), with the support of both domestic and international partners and stakeholders including the WTO, relating to issues of dispute settlement and other legal redress avenues for aggrieved parties.

“This Bill will establish legal mechanisms and procedures for responding to incidents of unfair trade practices that are causing or threatening to cause material injury to the domestic industry. More specifically, the two legislations set out administrative inquiry process of determining the existence of dumping, the existence of subsidies in price of imported goods, prescribed method of calculation of the amount of subsidization and increase of import, determining injury and causality in the local industry, and determining the national interest and the appropriate measures to be undertaken,” he said.

Furthermore, the drafting and adoption of this Bill would give effect to the provisions of the WTO Agreement, particularly Article VI and XVI of the GATT 1994, and to the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures which PNG was a signatory to.

“This will be implemented by establishing mechanisms and procedures to respond to dumping or subsidies that are causing or threatening to cause material injury to the domestic industry. This contributes towards the preservation of domestic production, jobs, investments and wealth creation, to foster the competitiveness and modernization of PNG’s industry and maintenance of a stable environment for business and fair competition,” said Minister Maru.

The Minister explained that the issue of dumping in this connection was not to do with standards, health or biosecurity issues.

“The dumping here refers to situation where foreign manufacturers export or PNG importers import a product at a price below the normal price with an injuring effect to the local producer of the same or like product. This situation is known as international price discrimination which has negative effect on local industries and jobs. We had one of our home-grown and successful local manufacturing industry, the Lae Biscuits Company, recently conceded to the effect of international price discrimination and is currently struggling to survive. Many other small manufacturing and local cottage industries are also struggling to compete with the influx and surge in the volume of like products. Therefore, as a responsible Government, we are taking action to deal with this challenges and threat to the growth of our domestic industry,” he said.

PNG’s last Trade Defence Legislation was repealed in 1997 soon after the country joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) as the legislation was not compatible with the principles of the new multilateral trading system. Since then, PNG did not have a legislation dealing with safeguards, dumping and subsidy issues and therefore the response so far had been to treat these through annual tariff amendments.

Minister Maru reiterated the multi-lateral nature of global trading environment had accelerated the process of economic integration which brought with it a lot of opportunities as well as challenges for PNG’s domestic industries, especially the manufacturing sector.

“It is important to close legislative gaps in our national trade legislative framework to allow our businesses and local entrepreneurs to thrive, facilitate fair and equitable trade, strengthen consumer and business trust, and allow inclusive and non-discriminatory economic growth and recovery. The Marape-Rosso Government is doing everything we can to support our local industries and SMEs to participate in global trade as well as attract more investment in the downstream processing and value-adding businesses in our country. Although, we cannot avoid being exposed to the challenges of the global trading environment, as a nation, it is important that trade in which we participate must be fair and equitable,” said Minister Maru.

“Supporting and building the capacity of our domestic industries has been consistent with the Government’s policy-priority through the development of Special Economic Zones and downstream processing for maximized export benefits for our people. We hope that this Bill will give more confidence to our industries and investors who wish to go into downstream processing of our vast natural resources,” he added.

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