CEOs positive about economic growth: Survey

Business

MORE than 60 per cent of chief executive officers interviewed in Papua New Guinea by the Oxford Business Group in a survey say they feel positive about the country’s outlook in the coming months.
The findings were released with OBG’s latest publication on the country, The Report: Papua New Guinea 2017.
It said it signalled that economic recovery could be on the way.
Issues explored in the report include the benefits that stabilised commodity prices and reforms are bringing to PNG’s economy, especially the balance of trade, which is at a record high.
The other issues are the national efforts to expand the non-mineral sector and new developments in the country’s project pipeline.
More than half of executives surveyed found it easy or very easy to obtain credit — a sign that PNG’s banking sector is maturing.
However, only 36 per cent of companies ranked PNG’s tax environment as competitive or very competitive on a global scale, suggesting that more could be done to simplify and reform fiscal procedures.
When it came to talent in the workplace, more than one-third of business leaders cited leadership skills as those they believed to be most in demand, followed by engineering.
OBG’s regional editor for Asia, Patrick Cooke, said both the results of the survey and analysis in the group’s latest report suggested that PNG’s economy was on course to improve, with GDP expected to grow by 2.5 per cent, although forecasts remained well
below the 13.3 per cent recorded in 2014.
“Though oil and gas prices remain subdued, the prospect of new discoveries, and the delivery of the landmark PNG LNG liquefied natural gas project has improved investment outlook in the country,” he said.