Sullivan raises concerns over China’s influence

CHINA poses a significant challenge to Europe’s influence in Papua New Guinea in the export sector, says PNG European Union (EU) Business Council president Michael Sullivan.
He said Europe’s was PNG’s second largest export market but that had been challenged over the years by China and recent reports showed the Asian giant had overtaken Europe.
“Since 2012 the challenge to the EU’s dominant position as PNG’s second leading export market had been from Asia,” Sullivan said. “In 2017, PNG’s major export markets were Australia, Singapore, Japan and China followed by the EU in that order.
“Preliminary reports in 2018 suggests that China has now surpassed Japan with the result that China is now Papua New Guinea’s third biggest export market behind Australia and Singapore with the EU in fifth place.”
He also said foreign direct investment in PNG was not easy to measure largely because not all direct investments were accurately recorded.
“Nevertheless, the most recent figures from the Investment Promotion Authority (IPA) shows that the five major foreign investors in PNG are China, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines,” Sullivan said.
“However, this does not diminish the accumulated direct investments of European companies in PNG.”
Aggregate direct investments in PNG by European business over the period of 2008 to 2017 totalled almost €3.1 billion (K11.95bil) according to Sullivan.
The main investors have been countries like the Netherlands, Great Britain, France, Spain, Denmark, Austria and Cyprus in mining and petroleum, engineering and construction and manufacturing.
Sullivan said although times had changed and economies had diversified but even today, Europe and PNG’s partnership was important with the economic trade agreement that existed between them.