Producing and buying locally helps FOREX market

Buying locally made products will help the foreign reserve currency market for the country.

“Once you start replacing imports with locally grown food you are saving on your foreign currency reserve,” says Innovative Agro Industry (IAI) chairman Ilan Weiss.

Currently Papua New Guinea’s big businesses are facing difficulties importing goods like before because Bank of Papua New Guinea have in place limitation on selling of foreign currency in a day to control the foreign reserve currency.

“Like right now what the supermarkets and retailers are doing is converting Kina into Dollars to bring (buy) foods in,” Weiss said.

IAI is the owner of the Nine-Mile Farm in Port Moresby and also today signed a contract to revive the famous Ilimo Farm in Central Province into a cattle ranch to produce dairy products.

Also it is developing organic farms in Enga and Hela Provinces.   

Meanwhile, the Department of Agriculture and Livestock Secretary Dr Vele Pat Ila’ava said Papua New Guinea have the landmass for commercial agriculture development.   

“PNG have close to 450, 000 km2 of land, about third of it is good for agriculture, and only 2 percent is used for agriculture which generates K2 billion for the country but we have lots of potential.”

Picture source: LR Group.  

Author: 
Charles Yapumi