Papua New Guinea has risen 14 places overall in the World Bank’s annual report on ‘Ease of Doing Business’, primarily in the areas of starting a business and getting credit.
Economy & Investment
The 2017 Federal Budget announces complex changes in company taxation arrangements. Spending on infrastructure, health and education will be cut, and there are signs that funding government debt may prove increasingly challenging.
Man-made constraints to business are the real obstacles to business development, according to Dr Charles Yala, the Director of the National Research Institute. In an address to the Australia-PNG Alumni Conference, Dr Yala said the country’s leaders need to ‘think outside the box’ and harness ‘our natural beauty and landscape’.
Loi Bakani, Governor of the Bank of Papua New Guinea has presented his Economic Outlook. It contains a few surprises.
Oil prices remain strong, but gas prices continue to move sideways. Silver continues to surge and gold prices are strong over the year. Business Advantage PNG’s monthly overview of commodity and financial markets.
The governor of the Bank of Papua New Guinea, Loi Bakani, says that the shortage of foreign exchange is ‘an issue based on supply and demand of foreign currency for kina.’ One way to increase demand for a nation’s currency is to modernise the bond markets. A World Bank report has looked at some options.
Increasing private sector involvement in Papua New Guinea’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs) would be a ‘powerful mechanism’ for improving the sector’s efficiency, according to a new report by the Asian Development Bank.
The greatest challenge facing Papua New Guinea’s financial system and businesses is to establish saving in the country’s mostly unbanked population. That is the message from three of the country’s top bankers.
The Papua New Guinea government has released its Supplementary Budget to adjust to ‘tough’ economic conditions. It assumes lower economic growth, a weaker exchange rate and higher inflation.
Papua New Guinea’s top two bankers, Loi Bakani, Governor of the Bank of Papua New Guinea and Robin Fleming, Chief Executive of Bank South Pacific, have asserted that the kina is not ‘controlled’. The shortage of foreign exchange is rather due to supply demand imbalances—but there is light at the end of the tunnel.