Investment fund not set-up yet

By DALE LUMA
THE Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) is yet to be established and made operational, according to Bank of PNG (BPNG).
BPNG made the statement when responding to queries from The National on whether there was a need for a SWF with major resources projects in the pipeline.
Prime Minister James Marape announced last Friday that mining and oil and gas projects such as P’nyang, Wafi-Golpu and Pasca were at advanced stages and their status would be known in September.
“The important benefit of the SWF is to prudently manage the future revenues from resource projects so that it can cater for current financial needs of the Government to grow the economy and also for the future generation of PNG,” the Central Bank stated.
“The SWF is yet to be established and made operational.
“The Department of Treasury is responsible for the SWF.
“It was created by the Organic Law on SWF.
“A SWF Act could be enacted to determine inflows of money into the fund and how the funds are going to be used which gave to be consistent with the Organic Law on SWF.
“But the SWF will be established and operated in PNG.
“It will have a board and management who will decide and formulate its investment policies and mandates, on how the funds will be invested overseas.”
When asked on the Central Bank’s initiatives in the small and medium enterprise (SME) space, it said it is continuing work on its SME Accelerator programme with the aim to provide guarantees to SME loans given by licensed financial institutions. The details of this guarantee will be announced at the time of launching.
The guarantee will complement the funding provided by the Government for lending to SMEs by the National Development Bank and Bank South Pacific.