New Year's Message from the Commissioner-General

AUTHORIZED FOR RELEASE

OFFICE OF THE EXPO COMMISSIONER-GENERAL

Embassy of Papua New Guinea , Brussels, Belgium

All Pavilion Staff

PNG Expo2020, Dubai, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

I am writing this message while looking down Avenue de Tervuren, working from the second floor of my Embassy Office and noting that you are also attending to your Pavilion and Expo2020 duties while the rest of our colleagues in Papua New Guinea are celebrating the holiday week with their families and friends at their homes, in the towns and villages.

Since you arrived in Dubai in September, you have been on shift duties seven days a week without any days or time off. You have also assisted me to ensure that the Pavilion programmes are professionally delivered in accordance with the strategic participation framework approved by the Cabinet of Prime Minister Honorable James Marape.

For some of you, this may be the first Christmas and New Year week that you have been away from your families and loved ones for the sake of serving your people and country outside of Papua New Guinea, in a foreign land many thousand miles away, amid the threat of the Covid-19 pandemic to your own personal life's.

Combating the pandemic is worse then a soldier fighting a conventual war where the enemy is defined and war plans, appropriate weapons and strategies are drawn up to win the battle. In pursuit of achieving your country’s national interests, you are fighting an invisible enemy and this means wearing your body armor of face mask, sanitizing, keeping your distance and complying with the Expo Committee’s safety protocols. This is the best defense you have in the circumstances.

Although the going is tough, I encourage you to fight your way through the journey that we have started together since we arrived in Dubai; a journey of story telling, listening, learning, sharing knowledge and innovations, creating visibility, opening up markets and creating new opportunities as well as entering into partnerships in trade, investment and cultural exchanges. In the first three months of this journey, you have made important connections with visitors to the pavilion, explorers, investors, traders and curious stakeholders. The interior design and layout and displays have received positive feedbacks with an average of 1000 people visiting the pavilion each day.

You have sold and promoted many products and artifacts and even ran out of stock with orders being placed to supply in the New Year from the Pavilion’s rear echelon staff at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade in Port Moresby. Your outstanding customer care and liaison abilities as well as story telling is providing important feedback, including from consumers of our products that is vital towards our country’s market access and product position purposes.

Further, you planned and executed important trade and investment promotion programmes and B2B and G2B interactions, including the very successful high level Round Table on Education, Science and the Green Economy organized on 15 December 2021. The Roundtable focused on: Living in Balance with Nature on the margin of the Expo-led theme on Knowledge and Learning.

Environment and science experts as well as academics, researchers, bankers, venture capital equity investors, policy makers and carbon and blockchain trade experts exchanged views, innovations and experiences to assist PNG protect the third largest rainforest in the world and to live in balance with the environment to benefit from it through sustainable development options.

The three main conclusions emanating from the Roundtable will be further discussed in Part 2 in February 2022 with the hope of entering into workable partnerships, including in the production of hydrogen gas from the environment such as conversion from natural gas to clean hydrogen gas.

In the second three months from January to March next year, you will be required to consolidate the progress made to date in market access, goods and services trade, including the promotion of cottage and SME trade through e-commerce to access the international market and to enter into B2B and G2B partnerships.

On behalf of the Government and the people of Papua New Guinea, I want to thank you and your families and loved ones for giving up your precious moments in this festive week to the service of your country and the people of Papua New Guinea.

Your service is about thinking outside the box and to bring about changes to connecting and improving on our international relationships, including in trade and investment. It is about Change. Sir Winston Churchill, the famous war time Prime Minister of the United Kingdom once said “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”

Joshua R. Kalinoe CSM, CBE

Ambassador Extra-Ordinary & Plenipotentiary Papua New Guinea Embassy, Brussels, Belgium

and Commissioner-General World Expo 2020

31 December 2021