Perspectives

Perspectives Business leaders provide their personal takes on the state of business in Papua New Guinea

There’s more activity in the deals space in PNG, certainly. It’s to do with generational change and business owners looking to retire. It’s also about organisations wanting to divest themselves of businesses that are maybe marginal or not core to their business.

‘We also see great movement in the banking sector. There’s more interest in becoming commercial banks. There are several organisations currently looking at getting banking licenses.

Zanie Theron

Managing Partner, KPMG PNG

Papua New Guinea is a very significant part of Newcrest’s business.

Last year, Lihir [the gold mine] produced around 35 per cent of the gold production for the group … and accounted for 35 per cent of the overall revenue.

Craig Jones

Chief Operating Officer (PNG), Newcrest Mining

PNG’s oil and gas sector is looking much stronger. We are paying down debt every year, we are depreciating the asset that we built, in the PNG LNG project.

Hopefully, future projects will take advantage of that position: the skilled people, the experience in every aspect of large oil and gas projects.

Wapu Sonk

Managing Director, Kumul Petroleum Holdings Limited

I think there’s always going to be a real war for talent, good local talent in this market. That’s something that we all have to build ourselves.

In terms of expatriate talent, I think COVID has certainly made that more challenging.

What I see on the positive side is that Papua New Guineans really step up. We’ve had to take a chance on people earlier than we probably would’ve done and we’ve been pleased with how people have done that.

Mark Baker

Managing Director, ANZ PNG

What I enjoy about working in PNG is that it is one of those markets where you learn to be very, very agile and very, very flexible.

As part of a masterplan we implemented recently, we have already made a big investment in Lae. We have a huge warehouse, the biggest one in PNG. We invested in a new, state-of-the-art production line. We have a brandnew office there as well.

We can now cope with business growth for the next five or six years, at least.

Philippe Mondada

General Manager, Coca-Cola Europacific Partners PNG

We have continued to see SMEs and commercial customers in all sorts of industries make a go of it themselves.

If you look at any company that comes into the country, the first thing they do is subcontract out all the work to local companies who have got the people on the ground, and the skill and capability, or the equipment.

Some of our biggest customers have been quite successful in winning subcontracting work on some of the major projects. And they’re now substantial companies in their own right. That’s typical of PNG.

Danny Robinson

CEO, Credit Corporation (PNG) Ltd