Economic activities to ‘pick up’ by end of year

By CLARISSA MOI
ECONOMIC activities should start to pick up towards the end of the year, Bank South Pacific chief executive Robin Fleming says.
Fleming, pictured, said based on a memorandum of understanding between the Government and Papua LNG partners last year, the memorandum contemplated Gas Agreements being finalised by the end of March.
“Which should be followed by the feed stage of the project in which the expectation is for the economic activity to increase
towards the end of the year,” he said.
Fleming earlier said that conclusions of formal agreements for the Papua LNG project and the Wafi-Golpu project were key deliverables in the first half of this
year.
“They are both significant foreign investment opportunities involving billions of dollars in investment and will be transformative for PNG,” he said.
“The locations of both projects also means that development will not be centred in one location but will create employment and investment outcomes in Gulf, Port Moresby and Morobe.”
Fleming also said that with the successful inaugural sale of sovereign bonds in the last quarter of 2018, foreign exchange had improved with trade backlogs having reduced and the time to complete an order also being much shorter than this time last year.
He told The National earlier that foreign exchange availability had also improved significantly over the past four months which benefited many importers.
“Therefore, as a result of larger flows and interventions at the end of 2018 and the prospect of foreign direct investment associated with Papua LNG, foreign exchange conditions should be more stable in 2019.” Fleming said.