PNG’s forex order book drops to K1bil: Bakani

PAPUA New Guinea’s foreign currency order book currently sits at around K1 billion, a drop from K2 billion in 2017, Bank of PNG Governor Loi Bakani says.
“The order book at the moment stands at around K1 billion,” he said.
“Most of it is import payments.
“You can imagine it has come down from close to K2 billion in 2017.
“Things are very stable at the moment.”
Bakani said on Monday that the most significant measure now was how long it took for commercial banks to clear its clients’ orders and the turnaround time had reduced from six months to two weeks for an average order.
He said they had been working closely with the banks to clear small orders so they did not bunch up into small parcels.
“If small, it’s cleared immediately,” he said.
“For the bigger orders, of course they will supply some judgment on how they will clear them over time both from their own US dollars that their clients bring in to the market and also from the dollars that we put in through our intervention.”
Bakani said they had done a lot more through the government to bring in the foreign exchange that was much needed to address the situation.
“We’ve brought in all the budget support from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the World Bank and the final drawdown of the Credit Suisse syndicated loan and of course the US$500 million (K1.6 billion) sovereign bond last year,” he said.
“Together with some of the existing PNG LNG also started to pay some dividends last year, taxes, those taxes come direct to us and then we give the kina to the government.”