LNG overtakes gold as PNG’s top export, female executive appointments in PNG public service low and Bank South Pacific reports a 4.8 per cent rise in profits. Your weekly digest of the latest business news.

LNG has overtaken gold as PNG’s top export commodity, according to the Chamber of Mines and Petroleum Executive Director Greg Anderson. Writing in the chamber’s latest newsletter, Anderson quotes Treasury figures stating that LNG exports in 2014 were valued at K6.3 billion, while gold earned K5.46 billion. PNG’s total exports, writes Anderson, rose from K13.3 billion in 2013 to K21.6 billion in 2014, a 62 per cent rise. He expects 2015 to have been another record year for export revenues.

An LNG shipment

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Only seven per cent of executive appointments in the PNG public service are held by women, according to Australian National University researchers. However, 54 per cent of all health workers (doctors, nurses, community health workers, health extension officers and allied health professionals) and 42 per cent of teachers are women.

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The Bank South Pacific group reported a consolidated operating profit after tax of K531.9 million for the 2015 financial year, a rise of 4.8 per cent on the previous year. Group revenues were up 3.2 per cent and the loan book grew by 27.6 per cent. Total capital adequacy at the end of 2015 was 23.1 per cent, more than double what is required under the Basel III  global banking regulatory requirements.

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THE Coffee Industry Corporation (CIC) and its stakeholders are expected to export over six million bags of green beans by 2030, says CIC Operations Division General Manager, Steven Tumae. He says the industry was badly affected by the drought in 2015 with only 720,000 bags of green beans.

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Prime Minister Peter O’Neill says the June deadline for the Pacer Plus trade deal covering the Pacific Islands, Australia and New Zealand is looking shaky. PNG has said it isn’t ready to sign the Pacer Plus deal in its current form because the terms were unfavourable to smaller nations in the Pacific.

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PNG’s pristine rainforest. Credit: ABC/UPNG

A two-year satellite image study by the University of Papua New Guinea’s Remote Sensing Centre has revealed 11,457 square kilometres of pristine forest was cleared or logged between 2002 and 2014. It shows pristine rainforest and unique species are being lost. Researchers are calling on PNG not to go ahead with major new logging concessions.

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Australia will open a new consulate in Lae, to help deliver Australia’s A$554 million (K1.261 billion) new aid and investment package in PNG.  A new type of visa will allow up to 100 Australian and 100 Papua New Guineans per year, aged 18 to 30, to enjoy a working holiday in either country for up to 12 months.

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PNG could gain US$83.3 million (K255 million) in economic benefits from seabed mining over two years, according to a report by the Pacific Community and the EU.

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The PNA’s Dr Transform Aqorau. Credit: PLP

The CEO of the Parties to the Nauru Agreement, Dr Transform Aqorau, has criticised bigeye tuna fishing nations, ‘such as Japan’, for failing to take an interest in ensuring the sustainability of the species. He says juvenile bigeye is the main type of tuna that is overfished.

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Fiji’s Tourism Action Group has been reactivated following Cyclone Winston. Chairman Damend Gounder says it will begin using social media to encourage international tourists, giving selected visitors selfie-sticks and cameras to capture and share their holiday experience online.

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The late Faole Bokoi. Credit: ABC

And finally, a man believed to be the last of Papua New Guinea’s famous Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels of the Kokoda Track campaign has died. The Kokoda Track Foundation says Faole Bokoi died late last week. The Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels, named for their frizzy hair, were the celebrated local stretcher-bearers and porters with the troops who fought the Japanese in PNG in 1942.