PNG's private security firms are arming and consolidating, and the regulator can’t keep up

Papua New Guinea has a security problem. Fuelled by weak state infrastructure, unequal economic development, and tribal and political violence, demand for private security services has grown. The result is an industry that is more heavily armed and more concentrated.

Yet a new Lowy Institute Analysis, Capitalising on (in)security: Regulating Papua New Guinea’s security industry by Bradley Dare, finds that the regulator lacks the resources and independence needed to oversee the changing market.

Drawing on a decade of company registration data from PNG’s Security Industries Authority (SIA), Dare finds the private security industry has expanded but that growth has been uneven. Company registrations rose 37 per cent between 2015 and 2024, while the guard workforce grew only 10 per cent — slower than the population. By some estimates, private security is the country’s third-largest employer.

The biggest change to the industry lies in what firms are licensed to do. Class A licences, which permit firearms, cash-in-transit protection and electronic security systems, have quadrupled since 2015.

The concentration of private security services in PNG’s largest firms also presents a challenge. The SIA, Dare writes, “cannot set or verify a national training standard except through the three firms that own the country’s only approved training facilities — the same firms that compete for the contracts such a standard would govern.”

“The SIA is responsible for licensing, training standards, and compliance oversight, yet has only a handful of staff and a small budget funded entirely by the industry it regulates,” he writes. It runs on “less than AU$760,000 a year to oversee an industry several times the size of the police force”.

“The remedy is unglamorous,” writes Dare. “An appropriation from the national budget, giving PNG a regulator able to form its own view. That is a decision for Port Moresby.”

KEY FINDINGS

• Papua New Guinea’s private security industry is changing shape faster than it is growing. Company registrations rose 37 per cent between 2015 and 2024, but the licensed guard workforce grew only 10 per cent — slower than the population. The real change is what companies are licensed to do.
  
• The industry is arming. Class A licensees, the only class permitting firearms, cash-in-transit, and electronic security systems, have quadrupled since 2015. The unarmed commercial middle has emptied out: medium-sized Class B firms have fallen from 24 to 9, and Class B guard numbers have roughly halved.
  
• A handful of firms determine the industry’s workforce. Six companies employ one-third of all registered guards, up from one-quarter in 2017. Year-on-year movement in PNG’s guard workforce is dictated by the contract wins and losses of four or five firms.
  
• The three largest firms run the country’s only approved guard training. Firms competing for international and government contracts heavily influence the accreditation that decides access to them.
  
• The regulator cannot form an independent view on any of this. The PNG Security Industries Authority has 14 staff, a single inspector per region, and no appropriation from the national budget. It operates on less than AU$760,000 a year, funded entirely by the industry it licenses. Independent funding is the only structural remedy.

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