Relief needed now, says Clough

By PETER ESILA
BRIAN Bell Group chairman Ian Clough says businesses affected by the Jan 10 civil unrest need the state-promised relief.
While acknowledging the Government’s decision to provide support funding for the affected businesses to recover from the loss of inventory and for rebuilding costs, Clough said it had been eight weeks and nothing meaningful had eventuated.
“The government issued a decision on a package to support affected businesses but is yet to be fully finalised,” he said.
“The events of Jan 10 occurred over 8 weeks ago. As yet, no meaningful relief has reached businesses.
“There are elements of the package relating to employee benefits and supporting affected employees that are positive.
“However, the concern for our business is that there is no immediate support provided to assist with restocking or rebuilding.
“The proposal indicates that loans will ultimately be available.
“Businesses need immediate support to recover and in our view, the government should be providing simple financial grants to support this urgent recovery process. Loans take time and are an added cost to businesses.
“Businesses don’t have time.”
Clough acknowledged the commercial banks in Bank South Pacific (BSP) and Westpac which had been supporting Brian Bell with foreign exchange when it was available.
“The Governor of the Bank of PNG has also assisted.
“However, we believe an effective solution would be an intervention of currency from the Central Bank, that is put aside for this restocking purpose and provided to those affected businesses rather than simply diverting the current FX allocations that are already inadequate to support the demand of the market.
“Our team have done an amazing job with ensuring our business is operating as normal.
“For our customers, they can come into any of our businesses across PNG and get the same great quality, the same wonderful service and the same value as they always have.
“Behind the scenes we have stock arriving every day.
“For a short time, we may have some product that is still not available but we have plenty of alternative products so our customers don’t have to miss out.
“We continue to assess our options regarding our warehouse rebuild.
“We are optimistic that we can soon start to clear our site at Gerehu while we finalise our plans to commence building a new facility.
“The quicker this happens, the quicker we can fit in the rest of the product we need for our customers.”