Business costs too high: Scovell

National
Source:
The National, Monday July 11th, 2016

The cost of running a business in the country is very high and law and order is a major contributing factor, Business Council of PNG director Chey Scovell says.
He told a business consultative forum in Port Moresby last week that businesses in PNG spent about 10 to 20 per cent of their expenses on security.
Scovell said labour, land and low productivity were the other factors that led to high cost of running businesses in PNG.
“Law and order is a major challenge, and it links to education and it’s a big blanket over the growth of PNG’s economy,” he said.
“High inflation in PNG is the cause of low productivity and high cost of security. Productivity and education are issues of concern and needs to be addressed.
“Although we are told 85 per cent of labour is in informal economy, agriculture is not the backbone of our economy, someone who is growing food to survive is not in the economy.
“Subsistence farmers are not contributing to the economy, they are helping people with their daily nutritional requirements. We need to help them get beyond that.”
Scovell said unemployment for PNG remained high. He said there were a lot of people out there that could work, and the challenge was to get them to be competitive.