Air Niugini shares go on sale by year’s end: O’Neill

Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Peter O'Neill says the 50% equity in Air Niugini will be on the market by the end of the year.

O’Neill said that when addressing the Australia-Papua New Guinea Business Council in Sydney yesterday.
He said already the Government had received interest from investment organisations and development partners.
“We will give preference to PNG-owned entities,” he said.
“But if they do not take up all the options of course it will be available to other investors.”
O’Neill said selling that stake in the national airline was part of the Government’s move to restructure State-owned entities.
“We will be doing our first privatisation and restructuring programme of Air Niugini and end of this year we will start selling out 50 per cent of
our equity in the PNG airline,” he said.
“With the success of that we will look at other State-owned entities like PNG Power, PNG Ports.”
O’Neill told participants at the council meeting that the National Government would soon introduce the Kumul restructuring programme.
“That will include all our (PNG) mining interests will be held by Kumul mining and all our petroleum interests by Kumul Petroleum this is because we want to give them an option to invest in new projects that are coming up,” he said. PNG Today / The National