Bank of Papua New Guinea negotiating with ‘partners’ about foreign exchange, Oil Search to address competition issues and Travel Air to resume operations. Your weekly digest of the latest business news.

Prime Minister Peter O’Neill

The Prime Minister Peter O’Neill has said, according to The National, that the Bank of Papua New Guinea and Treasury have been negotiating with ‘our traditional partners’ at the International Finance Corporation, Asian Development Bank and Exim banks about concessional support to generate foreign currency by way of funding projects.

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Oil Search will work with the Independent Consumer and Competition Commission to address competitive issues resulting from its takeover of InterOil, according to the Post Courier. Oil Search is set to increase its holding in the Papua LNG project to 29 per cent, according to a company presentation to the Australian Stock Exchange. It has 29 per cent equity in the PNG LNG project.

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Kumul Petroleum’s Wapu Sonk. Source: Business Advantage International

Kumul Petroleum Holdings Managing Director Wapu Sonk has claimed the State entity has completed audits of its accounts from 2009, according to The National. Sonk is reported as saying the company had done its best in working on its backlog of accounts. He said the company continues to ‘extend into future projects’ and that Papua LNG ‘is the next project that we will be working with Total on.’

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Airline Travel Air, known as Mangi Lo Peles, has announced it will resume operations in PNG, according to Papua New Guinea Today. The airline is expected to be in full operation in three months’ time. It temporarily stopped operations in mid-February this year.

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Melanesian Trustee Services (MTSL) has expanded its agro-business activities after signing an Exclusivity Agreement with Koitaki Plantations Limited (KPL), according to the Post Courier. KPL are the operators of a farming property on the Sogeri Plateau that supplies Koitaki beef to supermarkets in Port Moresby.

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The Intellectual Property Office of PNG has signed on to the Global Brand Database (GBD) hosted by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The GBD is a free database that makes available on-line all trademark records maintained by the national intellectual property office registries around the world that are also part of the GBD. It allows anyone to access records of trademarks as well as conduct searches.

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And finally, students in Port Moresby staged a peaceful rally outside Parliament on Tuesday where the opposition attempted to call for a vote of no confidence in the government of Prime Minister Peter O’Neill, according to Radio New Zealand. The rally coincided with a summit in Port Moresby attended by leaders from African, Caribbean and Pacific nations, including Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe.