INVESTMENT CONFERENCE
Left: KPMG PNG’s Managing Partner, Zanie Theron. Top: Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Marise Payne. Above: PNG’s Minister for Public Service, Soroi Eoe, [left] and PNG’s High Commissioner to Australia, John Ma’o Kali. Credit: BAI
Future-proofing PNG:
What the next decade holds The 2019 Business Advantage Investment Conference showed hown technology, entrepreneurship and regional growth will shape the next decade. By David James he 2019 Business Advantage Investment Conference, conducted in August at the five-star Shangri-la Hotel in Sydney, Australia, was an opportunity to consider the most pressing business and investment issues facing PNG into the next decade. The country is ‘positioned between the rising wealth of Asia and the established wealth of Australia,’ observed keynote speaker Bernard Salt, Managing Director of The Demographics Group in Australia. He evaluated demographic trends in the three export markets that matter most to PNG: Australia, China and Japan. China and Japan are growing as PNG’s trading partners.
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In 2010, 46.6 per cent of PNG’s trade went to Australia. Japan was its second trading partner with 14.8 per cent, the Philippines was third at 7.3 per cent, and China fourth at 6.6 per cent. However, by the June quarter of 2019, Australia’s share had shrunk to 25.3 per cent. China’s share had risen to 21.5 per cent, Japan’s to 19.9 per cent, and the Philippine’s had fallen to 3 per cent. Salt outlined differing prospects for the three biggest markets, adding that targeting those countries’ domestic markets directly may not be the most effectual strategy for Papua New Guinean companies. ‘I would say PNG would want to do business with corporations – not necessarily to sell product into the domestic market, but to sell product into companies’ supply chains.’ Salt contended that consumers in PNG’s key export markets, which he described as ‘entitled, ageing, aspirational’, are likely to change their consumption habits over the next
20 BUSINESS ADVANTAGE PAPUA NEW GUINEA
