Papua New Guinea’s stamp duty exemption for first-home buyers covers residential property valued up to K700,000. Not one of the 55 houses currently listed for sale in Port Moresby on the Hausples portal falls under that ceiling. The cheapest is K900,000, and the median asking price is K1,800,000.
The exemption threshold rose from K500,000 to K700,000 with effect from 1 January 2025, according to the Internal Revenue Commission’s summary of the 2025 Budget relief measures. Treasury’s 2025 National Budget Volume 1 costed the measure at K15 million.
That is 3 percent of the K500 million full-year cost of the government’s GST relief on essential goods, which Prime Minister James Marape told The National has been extended a further six months to 31 December 2026, at a cost of K420 million in foregone internal GST and K80 million in foregone ports GST.
What the measure is, and what it is not
The relief operates on stamp duty at the point of transfer. It is not a deduction against taxable income, and it does not reduce a buyer’s annual tax bill.
“Any Papua New Guinean buying a new home valued up to K700,000, as a first-time home buyer, will now pay zero stamp duty,” Marape said, in remarks reported by The National.
A second, separate threshold moved to the same level. According to Ramco’s PNG payroll compliance guidance, the housing cost cap under the First-Time Homebuyer Scheme, which allows repayable advances against recreation leave and superannuation entitlements, was lifted from K400,000 to K700,000, with the citizen first-time buyer exemption requiring IRC approval aligned to the same limit.
A third measure is promised but not yet delivered. The Department of Prime Minister and National Executive Council quoted Marape saying the government would remove the 10 percent GST for first-time home buyers, describing it as a follow-on from the 2025 Budget.
Marape restated that package in December 2025 during a site visit in Tari, Hela Province, according to LEKMAK, which reported the announcement as covering stamp duty removal below K700,000, GST removal on first-time purchases, and an allocation of state land for first-home buyers across the public and private sectors.
LEKMAK’s analysis of the package concluded that the largest saving comes from the GST removal, potentially tens of thousands of kina, and that the state land component, while significant, lacks detail.
The binding constraint is supply, and it is not new
Housing pressure in Port Moresby predates the current package by a decade. Research published by the PNG National Research Institute found that median annual house rent in Port Moresby exceeded median annual household income by 20 percent, producing a citywide affordability index of 1.2. The same study put the index at 2.94 in Town and 2.22 in Boroko.
An earlier study by Eugene Ezebilo, published in Buildings in December 2017, found a median monthly house rent of K7,286 in Port Moresby and an affordability index of 3.4. Both studies pointed to the same remedy: unlock customary land and increase supply.
Formal-sector employment, the population the exemption is aimed at, is thin. Treasury’s 2025 Budget Volume 1 records formal private sector jobs falling from 300,000 in 2014 to 270,000 in 2018, with growth of 2.9 percent between June 2023 and June 2024, above the prior year’s 2.6 percent.
The exemption reaches formal earners who can obtain a mortgage. On the current listing evidence, it does not reach the price band those earners must buy in.
Fiscal room is tightening, not loosening
The relief lands inside a consolidation program with little tolerance for revenue giveaways.
IMF staff and PNG authorities reached a staff-level agreement on 31 March 2026 covering the sixth ECF and EFF reviews and the third RSF review, unlocking access to about US$216 million on Board approval. The Fund projected the 2026 fiscal deficit at 1.1 percent of GDP, growth moderating to 3.8 percent, and inflation rising to 5 percent on Middle East conflict and higher import costs.
PwC’s 2026 budget commentary traces the path: 3.2 percent of GDP in 2024, 2.1 percent in 2025, and a projected 1.1 percent, or K1,608 million, in 2026. The World Bank’s March 2026 Public Finance Review puts the 2024 figure at 3.3 percent, a discrepancy the two documents do not reconcile.
The World Bank review also notes the Fiscal Responsibility Act was amended in the 2026 budget to lower the statutory debt ceiling to 52.5 percent of GDP, with public debt at 51 percent.
Monetary conditions moved the other way. Per PwC, the Bank of Papua New Guinea raised the Kina Facility Rate from 4.0 percent to 5.0 percent in September 2025 while cutting the cash reserve requirement from 10.0 percent to 9.0 percent.
Higher policy rates raise mortgage costs. A stamp duty exemption does not offset that.
What to watch
The GST exemption for first-time buyers has been announced but no commencement date has been published in the sources reviewed. The state land allocation has no published criteria, no site list and no volume target.
PNG’s stated fiscal objective is a balanced budget in 2027, per the IMF’s October 2025 statement, following a 1.1 percentage point deficit reduction in 2024 and at least 0.6 points in 2025.
Treasury has costed the exemption at K15 million. Against a capital listing book that starts at K900,000, that is the price of a measure that currently reaches nobody buying a house in Port Moresby.
