Power woes affecting trade

By DALE LUMA
THE country’s electricity supply woes are affecting businesses and constraining their growth, according to ANZ PNG.
Managing director Mark Baker told The National that it was “mainly a cost issue for us and many businesses”.
“We cannot afford to have interruptions to power supply and need to have to reliable generators and UPS systems to maintain operations at all times,” he said.
“Investment in modernising the power system is critical.
“Without reliable and cheap power, business growth will be constrained, whether as an SME or a larger company.”
Brian Bell group chief executive officer Cameron Mackellar earlier this year told The National that power outages was affecting trade and increasing the cost of doing business.
Mackellar said Brian Bell had a strong power back-up plan for its operations but power outages were impacting trade and increasing costs, especially the refuelling and servicing of generators.
He said power outages were becoming more frequent which was not good.
“We spent more than K300,000 in generator fuel across the group in 2020 and you need a generator when you don’t have power,” he said.
“This was nearly twice as much as we spent in 2019.
“Servicing and maintaining or replacing generators is an added cost as well.” The Port Moresby Chamber of Commerce and Industry (POMCCI) earlier this year said it had received complaints from its members that the frequent power outages were affecting their operations.
President Rio Fiocco said some of their members reported that some of their plant and equipment had been damaged as a result of the outages.
He told The National that those plant and equipment were expensive. PNG Power Ltd managing director Flagon Bekker said the country had a choice: continue to live with more power blackouts or “invest hundreds of millions of US dollars” to reform the country’s power supply system.