Papua New Guinea

Responding to challenges and existing knowledge gaps facing the cooperative movement, this mapping research seeks to provide exhaustive information on cooperatives worldwide. This is achieved through a process jointly conducted by the ICA and its four regional offices – Cooperatives of the Americas, Cooperatives Europe, ICA Africa, and ICA Asia-Pacific – using a common methodology. Each office collected the input of ICA members present in the countries within its geographic area, by using the same questionnaire, and completing it with relevant national statistics, in order to obtain an accurate picture of the national situation. Mapping out cooperatives in each country provides a more precise picture of the cooperative context at national and regional levels, enhances the movement's visibility, networking, partnerships opportunities, as well as advocacy, and empowers cooperators by providing them tools for positive change.

This webpage presents a snapshot of the research results for PNG. For more information, you can download the full report and the highlights here.

Cooperatives were introduced in PNG by the Australian colonial government after World War II. The intent was to mobilise landowners to participate in agriculture cooperatives, stimulate the economy with cooperative retail stores, and to monitor any political resistance. Cooperatives, for the most part of their history in PNG, have struggled to remain financially viable. New laws enacted in the 1980s have helped revive cooperatives and in turn drive social and economic development in rural areas. Financial and administrative support is available to cooperatives in the form of support grants and funds, as well as training programmes by Office of the Cooperative Societies of Papua New Guinea (OCS-PNG). 

ICA has one member from PNG. 

• Office of the Cooperative Societies of Papua New Guinea (OCS-PNG)

In PNG, the research questionnaire was distributed to and completed by 1 ICA member organisation in the country. The data collected was for the reference year 2018.

Summary

ICA member represents 6,000 cooperatives in the country, with 319,412 members. 

Cooperatives are present across diverse sectors in PNG including agriculture and food.