Further purchase of luxurious cars for regional summit in impoverished country is greeted with anger and disbelief

Papua New Guinea has reportedly added three Bentleys to its controversial fleet of luxury cars purchased for the upcoming Apec leaders’ summit in November.

Papua New Guineans reacted with outrage to the news that the PNG government had bought 40 Maseratis for the summit despite the country struggling with a nationwide polio outbreak, increased rates of tuberculosis and chronic funding shortages for health, education and other services.

Opposition MPs called for a nationwide strike over the purchase, which cost millions of dollars, calling it “blatant fraud”.

The anger looks set to continue after the Australian reported the government was also importing three super-luxury Bentley Flying Spurs, each costing more than $230,000.

The Australian published an invoice for the three cars made out to the Apec Papua New Guinea co-ordination authority, which put the total cost of the cars at just under $700,000. The Guardian has not been able to independently verify the invoice.

Calls for nationwide strike after PNG government buys 40 Maseratis for Apec Read more

According to the invoice, issued in July, the cars are to be delivered via sea freight in the last week of October in time for the summit, set to be attended by the Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, the US vice-president, Mike Pence, and China’s president, Xi Jinping.

Sir Mekere Morauta, an opposition MP and former prime minister of PNG, raised questions about the Bentley purchase including whether the cars had been procured using a competitive tender process and whether they were subject to duties and excise.

Mekere said the prime minister, Peter O’Neill, and Apec minister Justin Tkatchenko should explain why they have spent so much on Apec “including many wasteful, extravagant items such as luxury cars, at this time of suffering and hardship”.

PNG is the poorest country in the Apec group. It was announced in 2013 that it would host its first ever Apec summit this year. Since then PNG’s economy has sharply declined and earlier this year the central highlands area was devastated by an earthquake. There has been an outbreak of polio in the country, even though the disease was officially eradicated in PNG in 2000, claiming the life of a young boy.

O’Neill has defended the purchase of the Maseratis, saying the cars will all be sold on to the “private sector” in a public tender after the Apec leaders’ meeting next month.

Observers were doubtful of the ability of the government to sell 40 Maseratis – which had never been seen in PNG before – for the same price at which they were bought, and in a city with record high rates of carjackings.

Jonathan Pryke, the director of the Lowy Institute’s Pacific islands programme, told the Guardian the issue was “frustrating” and “tin-eared”.

“Peter O’Neill was saying this is not going to be Apec of largesse, it’s going to be a Pacific-style Apec, it’s going to be modest,” Pryke said. “If it’s going to be modest why don’t you have a fleet of [Toyota] LandCruisers? LandCruisers are the status symbol in PNG as it is and they could easily be recycled into the PNG economy.”

The Apec Papua New Guinea co-ordination authority was approached for comment.

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