PACTOW EXPANDS ITS TUG FLEET AGAIN

BSP: Loans to SMEs reach 60% rate

By Paul Oeka

Bank South Pacific’s Financial Group Ltd Chief executive officer Mr. Robin Fleming recently announced that the bank has granted more than K200 million as loans to small to medium enterprises under its credit scheme facility.

The Marape government had released the funds to the bank to support Small to Medium Enterprise (SME) and local businesses during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mr. Fleming said about 1,523 customer loans have been approved, or about 60% of loan approval rates since 2019.

Prior to this announcement, BSP and the Department of Commerce and Industry (DCI) had agreed to increase the maximum loan under the small-to-medium enterprise (SME) credit enhancement facility to K5 million.

The previous limit was K3 million when the Government first released K100 million as security to the bank under its K200 million SME allocation for BSP to rollout the loan facility last year.

Fleming stated that even though they have exhausted and rolled out the bulk of the government’s relief funds for SME’s they will still be running the loan program under its credit facility scheme.

“At this stage, BSP has not received the funding planned for this year, but that is not preventing BSP from giving loans under the facility”, Fleming said.

“There remains significant capacity for BSP to continue to assess, approve and funds loans under the facility”.

“The agreement with the Government did provide for momentum in the SME facility to be maintained while allowing for the Government budget and funding process to be adhered to”.

As part of the government SME relief funding, Commercial Banks were allocated K200 million, with BSP Financial Group receiving K100 million, NDB K80 million, and another K20 million allocated to the Department of Commerce and Industry.

BSP could not comment on how the National Development Bank (NDB) is dealing with the K80 million it received, but the intent, when discussions were initiated, was that BSP would be lending to more mature SMEs and NDB to startup ventures.

In addition to enabling SMEs to access lower cost of funds through the facility with BSP, the bank has also made it a responsibility to ensure that Government funding is preserved by not approving loans that have a higher risk of default.

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which is particularly important for some of our biggest customers, including those in mining, as well as oil and gas.”

The company’s additional investment in another barge and 1,000 new containers, including highcube reefers and 20FT and 40FT dry containers, is also significant in terms of increased service capacity and reliability. According to Bellamy, so too is it important in terms of safety. “Aging logistics infrastructure and equipment poses all sorts of potential risks when it comes to workplace safety, as well as environmental safety. At Consort our primary goal is to provide a 100 percent safe service which includes proactively replacing assets prior to them having any capacity to compromise safety.”

Consort transports cargo in a liner and project charter capacity for a diverse range of businesses, from domestic manufacturers and wholesalers to local farming, transport, and construction companies, as well as international energy and mining operators. Not only are Consort’s services vital to these organisations’ business operations but they are also critical to the health and development of communities all over Papua New Guinea. Consort has been transporting essential goods – including food, medicine, building materials and agricultural supplies – to communities for more than 40 years.

Consort extensively invests in its fleet and infrastructure to better service its customers with a complete and reliable shipping service. As the largest coastal shipping company in Papua New Guinea, Consort provides greater capacity and more frequent services than any other coastal operator. Consort is a division of a larger, intermodal logistics group solely owned by Steamships Limited. To learn more about Consort: www.consort. com.pg

Like all Consort vessels, ‘Kimbe Chief’ is crewed by a Papua New Guinean workforce. Captain Ila Ila, who holds a Master Class 1 (Unlimited) License has been employed by Consort for 15 years and is the new vessel’s first Captain.