The World Bank, through its subsidiary the International Finance Corporation, is developing legislation to create Special Economic Zones in Papua New Guinea. 

SEZs are fenced tax-free zones where foreign companies will be encouraged to set up sweat-shop type factories exempt from the usual laws of PNG.

SEZs involve taking land from local people who rely on it for their subsistence lifestyles, importing labor for low-paid jobs, pollution and environmental damage - but they deliver very few benefits. 

The land of the first SEZ, the Pacific Marine Industrial Zone, is already being cleared in Madang. The project is going ahead despite the massive social and environmental consequences foreshadowed in its own Impact Assessment.

There are plans to build up to 10 tuna processing factories within the PMIZ that will export duty free to the European Union under the terms of PNG's Interim Economic Partnership Agreement. The existing RD Tuna factory in Madang has already caused huge problems - imagine how much damage 10 such factories will do! 

Papua New Guinea is already crippled by corruption and democracy has, effectively, been suspended.

PNG is also struggling to regulate and manage the huge impacts of a number of new multi-billion dollar resource projects, including the Exxon-Mobil LNG, the Chinese-owned Ramu nickel mine, Solwara undersea mine (Nautilus Minerals/Canada), the Frieda (Xstrata/Switzerland) and Yandera (Newcrest/Australia Harmony Gold/South Africa) gold and copper mines. These projects are being implemented alongside existing mining, oil, logging, tuna and oil-palm projects that all have their own negative social and environmental impacts.

Papua New Guinea's economy, its people, its infrastructure and its bureaucracy simply does not have the capacity to deal with SEZs and we need to tell the World Bank to back off.

Please send a personal message to the World Bank NOW! using the simple form on this page.