Papua New Guinea has a very low debt burden in general, and a negligible foreign currency debt burden, Bank of Papua New Guinea Governor Loi Bakani has revealed.
He said the domestic debt service burden in 2015 was K991 million and external debt service was K84 million.
This comprised 7.3% and 0.6% of total expenditure, respectively.
Bakani was speaking at the recent 32nd Australia-PNG Business forum in Cairns pointing out some key economic areas which was raised by critics in the past years and months.
“The question is where did the commentators miss out? Where did they go wrong? It was well known and published that the National Statistical Office (NSO), is planning to publish the 2006-2013 GDP figures toward the end of March 2016.
“Instead of waiting for the publication, they were in a rush to use preliminary numbers published by the Department of Treasury, to criticize us,” Bakani said.
He said the Government undertook positive actions over last two years to adjust to the changing market conditions by introducing two Supplementary Budgets in 2014 and 2015.
He added that in the 2014 Supplementary budget, the budget was adjusted to the sharp decline in commodity prices.
“In the 2015 Supplementary budget, it was adjusted to the collapse in the oil price and the El Nino drought,” he said.
Bakani said the El Nino drought closed down the Ok Tedi mine for seven months, the Porgera mine for a shorter period, and it also resulted in sharp reduction in agricultural production, for domestic consumption and exports and the cost of relief supplies to the drought affected areas.
“Looking at the sectoral contribution to GDP in 2015, the year in which the PNG LNG project was in production for the whole year, shows that Oil, Gas and Mining contributed 26.7% and the traditional sectors make up 73.3%.
“In the traditional sectors, Agriculture contributed 16.7% and Construction at 12% are the largest ones.
“We can clearly state that we have a very diverse composition of GDP.”