Minister plans for new transhipment port in Gulf

By LEMACH LAVARI
A new wharf in the Gulf of Papua will serve as a stopover for ships from Asia into the Pacific and to the Americas, according to Minister for Commerce and Industry Wera Mori.
Mori said he was considering a private-equity investment to develop a transhipment port somewhere in the Gulf of Papua.
He said the Gulf of Papua was close to the Strait of Malacca, one of the most-important shipping lanes in the world.
The Strait of Malacca is a narrow 550-mile stretch of water between the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
The strait is the main shipping channel between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean.
It links major Asian economies such as India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, China, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea.
Over 94,000 vessels pass through the strait each year carrying about 25 per cent of the world’s traded goods such as oil, Chinese manufactured products, coal, palm oil and Indonesian coffee.
About a quarter of all oil carried by sea passes through the Strait, mainly from Persian Gulf suppliers to Asian markets.
Mori said the Lae Port Tidal Basin was not making significant impact to the country’s economy.
He said a wharf in the Gulf would promote Papua New Guinea as a stopover port for ships coming through the Malacca Strait and into the Pacific to the Americas.
“We have to grab our share of the global market,” he said.