22/03/2026
Diaspora Report Now Available on our Website
Here is President Susil Nelson-Kongoi's take on this report:
"For the past 2 years, our initiative, the Coral Sea Dialogue (CSD), have been engaging with the PNG Diaspora business community in Australia. Accounting for 28,000, average age of 45 and 64% have some form of non-school leaver qualification, this is perhaps the highest concentration of skilled professionals in any Papua New Guinea community domestically and abroad.
An outcome of the CSD was to incubate a business council for the diaspora. Am grateful for Leesa Tembi and her team who have established an Interim Diaspora Business Council PNG. First order of business was to undertake a comprehensive survey to hear the level of interest to participate in the PNG market.
Much of the Report highlights key findings of this work in the areas of sectors, remittance and the appetite to invest and trade in PNG. Crucially, it also includes the policy and law reform, both in Australia and PNG, to enhance this important community.
An exciting finding is the overwhelming desire to strengthen Papua New Guinea’s development priorities. With their passion and talent, Diaspora are well positioned to dramatically improve the skills gap in the market.
I am grateful for Brenda Cangah, Sean Jacobs and many others that contributed to this Report. Our ambition is to go beyond Australia and foster relations with other communities. It's now time to find wantoks, near and far, to reverse brain drain to brain gain.
Our ambition extends beyond Australia to the cultivation of sustained relationships with other communities. This is a critical moment to mobilise wantoks, both locally and globally, in order to transform patterns of brain drain into processes of brain gain."
Read the full report athttps://bcpng.org.pg/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/2025_DIASPORA-_REPORT.pdf
