Big investments move our country. This is why the Papua New Guinea Chamber of Mines and Petroleum hosts mining and investment conferences outside of the country.
It aims to gather multi-million Kina investors – and those who are already operating in-country – together to create partnerships and present PNG as an investor-friendly environment.
While local business conferences and SME meetings are equally important for economic growth, the PNG Chamber of Mines President, Anthony Smare, said it is multi-million Kina investments that move our country.
He drew attention to the 16th PNG Mining and Petroleum Investment Conference that was held in Sydney last year where all the investors – who had billions of dollars of investments in PNG – were there.
“Each one of them had over a billion dollars invested in Papua New Guinea,” he stated.
“We then had a dinner where we had people responsible for K80 billion of new investment into PNG over the next three years were sitting around the table with the Prime Minister and having a targeted conversation about it,” said Smare.
“So that’s the way we do these things. Let me now talk about what we’re doing here in Asia.
“It’s clear that Asia, and particularly China, is our most important investment and trade partner as a region. Asia has outstripped every other region in the world in terms of trading with us, and particularly, China.
“Hong Kong particularly, we have a relationship that goes over a hundred years because when the first European occupation came into Papua New Guinean settlements, they were accompanied by workers that came in from Hong Kong and Canton. And those workers then gave birth to a mercantile class because they left the service of the colonial administrators and they went and set up businesses, and that’s how the PNG-Chinese third and fourth generation families that have helped build our country; that’s where they all came from. The Wongs, the Seetos, the Yips, the Chans and the Stuckeys.”
With the successful conclusion of the inaugural PNG-Asia Investment Conference on Tuesday, the 17th of October in Hong Kong, Smare said PNG entrepreneurs now have the opportunity to list their companies on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, which is one of the largest markets in Asia with over 2,500 listed companies by the end of November 2022.