January 11, 2005

 

 

Papua New Guinea Seafood Exports At K227 Million

 

Papua New Guinea (PNG) earned a whopping K227.8 million from its seafood exports during the period January to October last year.

 

This is based on information provided by the Automated System for Customs Data (ASYCUDA) from the country's Internal Revenue Commission.

 

However, no information for the full year could as yet be provided.

 

More than 50 per cent of the export figures came from the sale of tuna fish species to most parts of the world including Australia, Japan, United States Germany, the Peoples Republic of China, Great Britain, Hong Kong, Austria, Canada, New Zealand, Indonesia, India, Malaysia, Laos, Malta and the Philippines.

 

PNG also exported tuna to its Pacific Island neighbours with Samoa spending nearly K3.5 million on its tuna imports from Papua New Guinea.

 

Most countries in the Asian region still remain PNG's biggest importers of all seafood with tuna fish species being the main import into the Japanese market.

 

China imported a large quantity of tuna from PNG and it also imported other seafoods such as sea cucumber, prawns and shark.

 

Australia is another big importer of PNG seafood ranging from tuna species, crabs, shark species, rock lobsters, barramundi, shrimps and prawns, sea cucumber and other smoked fish.

 

Germany, which never made many orders from PNG in the 10 months, had a large shipment of tuna last year worth K72 million.

 

The United States imported tuna, shrimps and prawns and lobster from PNG worth about K4 million.

 

Papua New Guinea exported a total of 65,458,585.74 kilograms of sea food and earned K227,858,512.30 for the 10 months from January to October 2004.

 

During the same period PNG imported seafoods, mainly processed, totaling 9,170,298.18 kilograms which was worth K28,508,511.16.

 

Papua New Guinea imports big amounts of processed seafood mainly from Australia and New Zealand.

 

PNG also imports fish bait from South Africa, Switzerland, and Taiwan and imports mackerel from the United States.

 

Seafood was also imported from other countries including Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and Vietnam, which exports octopuses to PNG.