By Besides my B’day this week, all this week is just hectic with business parties.
Last night I attended the launching of Inspac (PNG) Limited, which is this country’s newest entrant into the Insurance industry here. I’ve wondered allot about this, in that there must be some serious money in Insurance Broking, Underwriting and/or re-insurance? And/or is this a result of an economy that’s picking up?
I have no clue about the Insurance industry but we already have Tower Insurance, QBE, Pacific MMI and two of our website clients Pacific Assurance Group and Insurance Partners. So I imagine Inspac must be all fired up to take on the challange. (The name ‘Inspac’ is an abbreviation of Insurance Pacific).
I was invited by Richard Kassman the General Manager of this new company and I was pleased to learn that the company is the brain child of Augustine Sanga Mano. I have never met him before but he is a resource owner from Gobe and he has lead his landowners to invest in this business. We do have a general perception that landowners in PNG do not know how to spend their money etc, but it was good to hear from Chairman Mano, that they were here to challange these perceptions and to invest their resource money into big businesses that could grow the nation. The Chairman and GM went on to say that they wanted to build a locally owned Insurance company that could appeal to a wider PNG market.
Well I wish them all the best and if they can prove what they have promised at their launching then all the better for PNG owned big business. They are well capitalised with money well over the required K2 million minimum for their licence and as any good Insurance company would have it, they are also re-insured by a Lloyds syndicate.
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So that’s one function I attended this week, on Friday I have a Hideaway Hotel cocktail party for them to thank us their customers. I spend money there through my work with Port Moresby Rugby, so it’s a nice guesture on their part, (and obviously good PR).
Then this afternoon at 3pm I’ve been invited to a ground breaking ceremony for a new block of aprtments which is located next door to the Yacht Club. Again what interested me was that the builders were given a loan from our Bank South Pacific for roughly K28 million for the project. If you look at my invite above there, you can see an artist’s impression of what it will look like.
Now whether or not it will be a great place to stay or whether I will ever be able to afford to live there is another matter. My query again is, well business must be good?!
So with all these launch parties and free wine and beer and nibblies and with the economy looking great and all, how do we extend business successes into the rural areas for development there? Is all the money going to be re-cycled in the cities in PNG?
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Update 24/03/07
Here’s a PDF report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on how PNG is going.
6 comments
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March 13, 2007 at 11:40 am
Varigini Badira
Emmanual,
I truely share you view on this. Business seem to be going good. Two Five star hotels, 1 fours star. Vechiclar traffice increased by three to fourfolds. 12% jump in tourism. Hosting of the prestigeous APC conference. And if you do a online seach of Papua New Guinea we have 58 000 000 hits as compared to when I did the seach about the same time last year which was at 42 000 000 hits. If this is a indicator of better days ahead, then we must be in the throes of change. Important thing, how can the spin-offs trickle down to the 70% of in the rural areas? All in all, truely business is good, but I just need to find a way to jump on the band wagon before I get leftout…..
Cheers
V. Badira
Tokyo
March 13, 2007 at 12:07 pm
Emmanuel
Domo Arigato V.
Yeah that’s just the thing that’s bugging me, how can we be more entreprenuial at the rural level? What sort’ve businesses do we need to create at that level to stimulate economic activity?
What if each village in a district specialised in a skill or activity? Like village 1. raises pigs and village 2. grows rice. Maybe we need to promote rural initiatives like this before farmers can graduate to exporting around the country or the world. Some can do it like coffee but most still need to learn the basics.
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But anyway, on your end what are you up to in Japan? (Nihon ni ikitai desu!) Are you studying or working there? Maybe there’s something in Japan that you can bring back to PNG to help you get on that bandwagon.
March 14, 2007 at 3:24 am
Varigini Badira
Arigato…doitamashite.
Yes nihon and especially Tokyo is what we all percieve it to be. Advanced, efficient and hardworking. Drop me a note if you do plan ahead to visit.
I agree, we should all get like minded young patrotic PNGeans together as a conglomerate to look abroad and to sustain rural initiatives through motivation in kind. I believe that its is our time and responsibilty handed down by our fathers to promote nationalism, quest to reduce poverty by seeking equal grown in wealth, knowlegde and material as a way to counter the negative concequences of causality…liklik 2toe tingting blo me tasol.
btw, i’m doing graduate studies at tokyo institute of technology. I’m also the owner of http://www.vortexpng.com. Hope I can also help png in some littleway as possible.
cheers
V.Badira (aka… kolwan: vortexpng)
March 14, 2007 at 6:13 am
Emmanuel
Ah Ripah Desu ne!…will certainly let you know if I head that way.
Definately it is our time, I see it already here in Business, but it is in Politics that someone has to stand up.
Yeah I’ve seen your site, good one! Well with your website you would be in a better position I imagine to gather like minded professionals overseas.
And what are you studying?
March 14, 2007 at 9:28 am
Badira
Cool ma brada…bai mi body guard in tokyo. Btw, you got an awesome thing going here. Tambz mentioned it to me couple of years back, I think it was Emmanual Bobola about the stuff your doing..its excellent! As you know…it can only get better with technology.
Brada…i’m wif that Department of Mechanical and Environmental Informatics, Graduate School of Information Science and Engineering doing my PhD, not a computer geek but into c++, fortran programing and numerical modelling of Global, regional and environmental systems…the Global warming and climate change kinda stuff etc.. so yes, i’m using a system call the Earth Simulator (1 of the world fasters PCs) based in Yokoyama under The Frontier Research Center for Global Change and Japan National Institute of Environmental Science.
Well bro, you have a strong techno network and with current tends in software and hardware systems, might be great time to take on the big fish…broadband tech and the increasing online png population will definitely come in handy.
Anyway, cheers and hapi 3-0. keep in touch…have planti to talk about.
March 14, 2007 at 10:40 am
Emmanuel
Cool, wow that’s amazing stuff! Must be really interesting…you know that just awesome that we have PNG’eans like yourself doing stuff like that out in the world.
Things are going okay on my end, still not where I want to be yet and I’m not making millions or anything like that, but I certainly do hope that I can grow bigger to help out where I can.
So I guess you must be right in on the global warming debate and issues like that? Great work, again I am really proud to know we have technical people like yourself out in the world.