PNG’s Trade Tussle With Fiji Continues
Papua New Guinea Government has given the Fijian Government 14 days to respond favourably over its request to allow certain PNG products currently under restriction to enter the country.
It said failure to do so would lead to PNG no longer allowing the entry of Fijian poultry products into PNG.
PNG’s Trade Minister, Richard Maru, said he had written to our Minister for Industry Trade and Tourism, Faiyaz Siddiq Koya, asking for clarifications on the reasons for restricting the entry of the products.
Our Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism, was preparing a response to questions sent regarding this when this edition of the Business Liftout went for printing yesterday.
Mr Maru had earlier raised concerns over Fiji’s refusal to allow imports of Ox & Palm, Trukai Rice and other Papua New Guinea products from entering Fiji.
Papua New Guinea has further accused Fiji of ignoring the Melanesian Free Trade Agreement and thus the threat to adopt retaliatory action.
“We have allowed Fiji to have a trade surplus with Papua New Guinea for a long time and trade volumes are increasing,” he said.
Mr Maru emphasised Fiji’s refusal of allowing PNG products into Fiji also ignores the Melanesian Free Trade Agreement that Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) countries concluded upon this year.
He said Fiji could take appropriate action now to alleviate the problem, but could not sit back and hope this problem would simply go away.
Trade statistics
PNG media reports have highlighted Fiji exports goods worth more than FJ$41 million to PNG while PNG exports only FJ$2.8 million to Fiji.
But figures from the Fiji Bureau of Statistics reveals that Fiji’s exports into PNG dropped drastically in 2014 in comparison to 2012 and 2013.
Fiji’s exports into PNG in 2012 was around $73 million, 2013 it went down to $63 million and in 2014, it was $17 million which was a big drop.
In terms of imports from PNG, in 2012 it was around $4.4 million, 2013 it went up to $7.2 million and 2014 finished with $7 million worth of imports.
Feedback: rachnal@fijisun.com.fj
