Expert: High shipping costs affecting fisheries

HIGH shipping costs are affecting the fisheries sector in the country, an official says.
Speaking at the PNG tuna fishing industry consultations in Port Moresby, independent consultant Chakriya Bowman said the high cost of doing business makes it hard for PNG to compete with other countries overseas.
“One of the key problems that we face is the business enabling environment here in Papua New Guinea and high cost of doing business and to enable the country to compete with countries overseas,” Bowman said.
“Figures show that it costs US$500 (about K1,767) to produce things here compared to US$270 (about K954) in Thailand and US$230 (about K812) in the Philippines.
“Those figures are from a few years ago but unfortunately nothing has changed.
“We are faced with very high costs and a lot of them have to do with shipping.
“Our wharf fees are high and there are some more levies that have gone up in the last budget and that is something all the exporters are keeping an eye on because it causes big issues and negative costs to them that other countries are just not impacted by.
“A lot of the barriers here domestically are higher costs of labour, infrastructure and logistics problems, the fact that trucks were out five times faster on roads in PNG than they would in Australia.
“This makes all our industries, agriculture, fisheries and even forestry much less viable then they would be in another low cost environment.
“These are things that impact across all sectors but obviously very important to the fisheries industry as well.”