With Papua New Guinea’s second case of COVID-19 discovered in East New Britain, the province’s businesses are getting ready for weeks of disruption.

Nivani was already working well below capacity before the case of COVID-19 was discovered.

Prime Minister James Marape recently confirmed Papua New Guinea’s second COVID-19 case, a 40-year-old woman who is a resident of Kokopo in East New Britain Province.

The Prime Minister announced that the Controller of the State of Emergency, Police Commissioner David Manning, has made a decision to lock down the entire province for the next 21 days. Commercial flights in and out of East New Britain are restricted.

‘We’ve coped with volcanic eruptions and earthquakes and similar and I’m sure we’ll cope with this as well.’

David Stein, General Manager of Nivani and President of the East New Britain Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which is based in Kokopo, believes the retail trade will feel the effect the most.

‘I think there will be a big shift in diet from imported food to locally grown food. A lot of people eat local food as a supplement, but now it will end up forming the mainstay of their diet,’ he tells Business Advantage PNG.

‘Business was already restricted,’ says Stein. ‘We had about 90 employees turning up out of 230. So we were still operating, albeit at about half pace.’

‘We were already in some degree of economic duress before this case.’

Businesses face a three-week suspension of non-essential business, with uncertainty over the opening of the ports to container vessels. There are no clear manufacturing supply lines and even the main town market is in lockdown.

‘The Chamber of Commerce’s viewpoint – and we mentioned it several times in our control meetings – is that we believe that all of the community schools should be set up as market points – everyone would know where their closest marketplace would be,’ Stein says.

‘There are no students and they would all have toilets and hand-washing facilities. The less distance people have to travel, the less likely the infection will travel.’

The Internal Revenue Commission has announced that its tax centre in Kokopo will be closed until further notice; it is encouraging business to pay taxes by mail or online.

Business already in pain

David Stein, General Manager of Nivani and President of the East New Britain Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

‘We never expected to be at ground zero,’ Stein says, adding that things had already been tough in East New Britain. ‘We were already in some degree of economic duress before this case. Our company, for example, has been owed money by the government going back four years and there are a lot of companies who are owed money for road work and for construction work. That was the first bit of money that dried up, going back to 2015.’

‘The USA’s woes are only just beginning. We don’t know with the exports from PNG just how much of that market is going to exist coming out the other side.’

Stein explains his chamber of commerce is looking to the future and has concerns about the country’s export business. ‘I have expressed the importance here of keeping our export industries operational. The big shift in most countries has been from imports to homemade products, to a very large extent.

‘The USA’s woes are only just beginning. We don’t know with the exports from PNG just how much of that market is going to exist coming out the other side.’

The ENB Chamber of Commerce head points out that his construction business has already had difficulty getting inputs and has three months worth of foreign exchange orders yet to be filled.

‘I had a meeting with the Department of Labour for the initial 14-day state of emergency and they were telling employers that they need to pay their employees even when they are not working,’ he says. ‘There is a limit to what we can pay employees without the income and the production to cover it.’

Stein describes the government stimulus as more of a ‘supplementary budget’.

Giving it time

In nearby Rabaul, Nick Lyons, Managing Director of Rabaul Metal Industries, tells Business Advantage PNG his business is closed. ‘We are giving the authorities time to work out exactly what their response is’.

Lyons reports that, apart from a few people checking out the supermarkets, there is ‘basically nothing going on’ in the old town. ‘My guess is we will stay closed all this week. Then there is the Easter weekend. We are the distributor of compressed gases so I am in the office in case of enquiries for medical oxygen.’

He says in the past two weeks he has followed clear guidelines with employees who need to stay home if they show any cold and flu symptoms. He is impressing on all employees the importance of good hygiene.

‘We’ve coped with volcanic eruptions and earthquakes and similar and I’m sure we’ll cope with this as well,’ Lyons adds.