ANZ working with Bank of PNG

 ANZ Bank says it will continue to work closely with Bank of Papua New Guinea to help provide stability to the country.

“As a commercial bank with a long history in Papua New Guinea, ANZ continues to work closely with the Central Bank and our customers to provide financial services and products to support the country and its economy,” ANZ said yesterday

The bank was asked by The National whether it had enough foreign currencies for its transaction after recent announcement by BPNG Governor Loi Bakani of a shortfall in the foreign exchange.  

“That support has been there throughout economic cycles and remains in place today,” it said.

Bakani had said the foreign reserves was at US$2 billion dollars (K5.4 billion), which was a short term issue and the Central Bank was looking at ways to resolve it. “We have met with a lot of importers to discuss ways we can address their import demand requirement. Especially bigger players like Trukai, Puma and Digicel,” he said.

Puma Energy said recently that due to the lack of liquidity in foreign exchange market, it was only been able to convert limited amounts of local currency into US dollars to pay for its supplies and that forced the company to stop the refinery of petrol.

Meanwhile, Digicel PNG said it was talking to commercial banks and BPNG to buy foreign currencies to meet its overseas supplier obligations.