Protocols yet to be established to export commodities: Official

PROPER protocols are yet to be put in place to export commodities apart from fish from Papua New Guinea to the European market, says an official.
First assistant secretary for the Department of Commerce and Industry’s trade division Richard Yakam said there were protocols for exporting fish but not for other products.
“For exporting fresh or frozen fish to the EU market, the fishing vessel must be owned by a Papua New Guinean or 15 per cent of the venture must be owned by a Papua New Guinean but the same cannot be said about other commodities and products,” he said.
“Even though coffee, vanilla, cocoa, copra and other commodities are listed as eligible products under annex 3A of the economic trade agreement between PNG and the EU, we have yet to establish export protocols.
“PNG has been exporting products like coffee, cocoa and vanilla but the volume is very small and there is no market presence in the EU market.”
Yakam said demand for PNG products in the EU market had increased after the country signed an economic agreement with the EU but the country’s export and supply to the market had declined over the years.
“Global players with far more competitive production and value chain technologies and logistics and distribution networks other than PNG also serve the EU market,” he said. “While we acknowledge that PNG has export potential in certain products, the main culprit that weakens export performance is the high cost of production partly due to the underdeveloped structural and institutional capacities.”
Yakam said to be more competitive in the export of commodities, PNG needed to address supply chain constraints and understand the value chain.
“We will need to establish protocols for each product and meet the EU market requirement in terms of biosecurity standards and consistency in supply,” he said.
“In this regard, we at the trade office have developed a concept paper on evening and widening the economic partnership agreement.
“We shared the paper with our counterparts in the EU and we have started initial discussions.”
Yakam said the paper sought discussions on protocols required to establish trade on goods and services that were of interest to PNG.