Indo-PNG trade drops

THERE has been a progressive decrease in bilateral trade between Indonesia and PNG despite more than K500 million in value of trade recorded last year.
Indonesian Ambassador to PNG Ronald Manik, pictured, told The National that trade between the two countries had decreased by almost 60 per cent on figures five years ago.
“Based on the figures processed by the trade data and information centre, Ministry of Trade of Indonesia, you could see that in the last five years, bilateral trade value between the two countries tend to decrease significantly,” Manik said. “For instance, the value of bilateral trade in 2011 was US$443.3 million (K1.374bn) compared to US$178.9 million (K554.65m) in 2016 which is a decrease of around 60 per cent.
“The similar trend occurred on figures of 2016, which is US$178.9m (K554.65m) compared to US$223.9m (K694.1m) in 2015 or a decrease of around 20 per cent. Likewise, the Indonesia’s trade surplus with PNG in 2016 decreased around 34.2 per cent compared to the surplus in 2015 which stood at US$184.6m (K572.3m).
“Indonesia’s total trade in 2015 recorded a value of US$293b (K877.4b), meanwhile in 2016 the figure was US$280b (K868b), a slight decrease from the previous year.”