Bakani: Foreign exchange situation not as bad as claimed

THE current supply of foreign exchange in Papua New Guinea is not as bad as what has been claimed by some businesses and companies in the country, according to an official.
Bank of PNG (BPNG) governor Loi Banaki told The National yesterday that commencement of some of the major resource projects in the country would help in the foreign exchange supply.
“The situation is still the same,” he said. “There are two things.
“One is that the providers of foreign exchange like, Porgera is out now, it is not exporting.
“This will affect the inflows of foreign exchange and dollars coming in.
“With the price now down for oil and gas, it might affect the revenue coming in but the demand for foreign exchange or dollars going out is still high.
“For March, we’ve seen some decline because some companies actually slowed down operation and demand also slowed down.
“It might change when we get back to normal.
“It’s not to say it’s the worst, it’s still the same.
“We were looking at ways on how to address it.
“We are getting money coming to support the Covid-19 measures, it will then bring us the dollars,”
“And then we will be able to provide that FX to the private companies.”
Bakani said construction phase of some of the resource projects was important.
“When they (resource projects) go into their construction phase, we will see a lot of dollars coming in,” he said.
“It’s very important to have those projects started. We saw that in the PNG LNG construction where we had the dollars coming in so hopefully the Government can get some of those projects going.
“Wafi (Golpu) is already going, Papua LNG has been approved, we are discussing Pasca now, and of course P’nyang.
“But the first two starters are Wafi-Golpu and Papua LNG. That will bring in a lot of foreign exchange.”