Caption: NDB boss Moses Liu
By MATTHEW VARI
Sunday, November 8, 2015 (Sunday Chronicle, PNG)
DESPITE being allocated well below its current need in rolling out the country’s growing Small to Medium Enterprise (SME) sector- the National Development has welcomed its 2016 budgetary allocation of K61 million.
Under key sector investments, the K61 million allocated consists of K6.5 million to the People’s Microbank, Stret Pasin Retail Incubation Program K20 million, and Agriculture and SME Funding K35 million.
A pleased Managing Director, Moses Liu said the bank understood the circumstances surrounding readjustment measures taken in the 2015 Supplementary Budget and the 2016 National Budget allocation.
“It is a situational thing that we need to adapt to basically because of the revenue and as the government you need to adjust.”
“Our expectation is that we did give our budget submission but the government’s role is to basically balance all the expectations that come through so I think it is selfish for me to say we are not happy with what the government has given us.”
“Obviously it is going to have an effect on our plans going forward, particularly to meet the demands of the SME sector. The sector has been growing at a rate of 25% every year since the introduction of the SME Stimulus package,”Mr Liu said.
He added that despite the disappointment for intending customers and existing customers, there were positives in the budget for 2016 for the bank to look forward to.
“We still have K50 million in loans that are yet to be funded, however, we need to manage the expectation and with regards to the Stret Pasin Incubation program fortunate for the first time we have been allocated k20 million in the budget so it’s a first and positive out of it we won’t complain,” Liu said.
“We want the government to implement that very important program basically to assist Papua New Guineans to do business. We also have been K6.5 million for the micro bank as well, that’s good to roll out an additional 4 branches next year and we also received funding from government to build four new micro banks with plans underway in the process of actually opening two of those in this point in time.”
“But next year with the additional funding coming through it will help with the operational capacity of the bank to meet some of the requirements of the Bank of PNG where we never had adequate capital to cover the deposits that we had, called capital efficiency ratio, so it will help the company to strengthen its operation.”
He said overall it was good despite the K35 million for the general SME funding he compared to others they were lucky to have the amount.
“With a depressed economy you will expect a reduced balance. I think we fair well under the current situation.”
“Unfortunately we were not given the full funding for 2015 K50 million. We only received K10 million and under the supplementary budget we are expecting another K10 million so the revised adjusted for 2015 is K20 million so we are hopeful that we will receive the other K10 million before the end of the year.”
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