The country’s national power generation and transmission company- PNG Power Limited, is not going to be sold because it’s got some major financial issues that it is currently dealing with.
The Minister for State Owned Enterprises William Duma in parliament today, admitted that the power company owes various creditors substantial amounts of money and already two of those creditors have taken the power company to court.
However, this matter is being sorted out and the minister stressed again that PNG Power will not be sold off for cheap as a last-minute measure to get out of these problems.
“I can announce that we have reached agreement with those companies, which actually are owned by our own people. They recognized that their own national power company is in trouble, and they have agreed to allow PNG Power time to trade its way out of those difficulties,” said the minister.
“It is not a company that can easily be sold just to get out of the mess like that, in the immediate term and the near future PNG Power will not be sold, not at fire sale prices where our people will not get a decent return on this company and its assets.”
On top of all these, the minister told parliament that the government has also put together something that should help the company back on its feet.
“It is not a company where we’ve ignored, we’ve invested a lot of time and very soon with the approval of the prime minister, there is a rescue package that has been proposed to cabinet. Cabinet should be able to approve it, we will then see things being turned around.”
“Yes, it is a problem company, but we are not sitting back and allowing it to go down further, we are doing everything we can to rescue it and turn it around,” he added.
Minister Duma said all these when responding to questions from the East Sepik Governor Allen Bird during question time in parliament, on the power issues in his provinces and the overall issues PNG power currently facing.
Caption: PNG Power has major debt crisis on hand.