INVESTMENT
Perspectives on Papua New Guinea Business leaders provide their own take on opportunities in PNG’s economy. ‘We are doing deals now for customers who need more equipment, more space and we’re continuing to lend to viable propositions in the property sector. By and large, a lot of lending is to people with existing businesses needing more space or capacity for their operations. It’s great to be a banker in a country where the economy is strong and the vast majority of our customers are doing extremely well. ‘ —Ashleigh Matheson, Managing Director, Westpac Bank PNG Ltd ‘PNG is a country that wants to be number one, it really does. There’s a desire among the people who work there that they really want to make anything happen. So you can have the greatest challenge but you’ll always find people who are willing to roll up their sleeves, put their shoulder to the wheel and just do it, and that’s not something you see as much when you go across other markets in the Pacific. Sometimes there is an element of “Well, it’s just too difficult.” Here, that’s not the case. Here it happens. People make it happen and that’s hugely important.’ —Stuart Kelly, Chief Executive Officer, Bemobile
Cadden Crowe Pacific
Cadden Crowe is a professional Search and Recruitment Consultancy operating within five key sectors of Mining, Oil & Gas, Engineering & Construction, Energy, and Manufacturing with a specialisation focus. Cadden Crowe has established offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Port Moresby. In addition, we have alliance offices in Noumea and Jakarta and international partners in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas. With these strong local and international partnerships, Cadden Crowe is well placed to meet all of your people requirements. The following customer focused products are offered: • • • • •
Advertised Search and Selection Psychological Assessment Database/Network Search Executive Search Market Mapping
• Management & Organisation Development Consulting • Bulk Recruitment • Contracting
For all your local and expatriate personnel requirements, please contact: Nic Clark in Brisbane George Griffin in Port Moresby
+61 7 3003 0466 +675 7656 0477
nclark@caddencrowe.com.au ggriffin@caddencrowe.com.au
‘PNG is poised to emerge from the low income group of developing countries and become a lower-middle income country. We’re yet to see the fallout of the extractive industry’s growth. All the issues around labour shortage we’re seeing occur but, generally speaking, nothing has been as big or as bad yet as people feared. We definitely see the PNG Government’s development strategy as a positive and we’re hoping to support them on that. The IFC has invested US$200 million in PNG so far, helping companies such as Digicel, PNG Microfinance, BSP and K K Kingston transform, and we’re currently looking at opportunities in agriculture, tourism and financial services.’ —Carolyn Blacklock, Country Coordinator—PNG, International Finance Corporation ‘The next few years in PNG will be very exciting—the LNG project has only just started and is likely to very lucrative for business. But businesses will need to be disciplined and well-organised to grow. PNG’s quite progressive in its legislation—it’s easier to do business here than, say, Fiji, although the lacked of skilled workforce is a major challenge. One area to look at is infrastructure. The country is looking to spend more money on transportation and power. While a standard portion of this expenditure is aid-funded, public–private partnerships are likely to play a stronger part—the telecommunications industry is the first experiment and is now looking better for it. While a lot of the influx of new businesses coming to PNG has been in the resources sector, I see great opportunities in certain other niche areas for small and medium sized businesses. Take pathology, for example: at present all blood samples taken in PNG have to be sent overseas for testing. Other areas of opportunity would include technology services (there is currently no secure data room in PNG) and retail. People in PNG are getting better salaries and have therefore got more disposable income— you can see they’re acquiring more luxury items.’ —Zanie Theron, Partner, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu PNG "There’s a lot of talk about law and order problems. We see a lot of stories in the Australian press, which are frowned upon here because some of the stories play things up worse than they are. They don’t show the good news stories, which unfortunately for those offshore gives a slanted view. We don’t have a law and order problem in Papua New Guinea as such—the laws are quite good—it is the order that is the problem, and the enforcing of it, and the police force and judiciary is working towards that end now with Government support.'
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—Wayne Dorgan, Managing Director, Pacific MMI Insurance
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