Multi-nationals vie
p. 59 · Read in the full issue
for sales in PNG
This office and com puter feature was com piled by Ken McGregor , a former PIM staff man and now a specialist writer with the Aus tralian Financial Review.
A handful of multinational corpo rations from the US, Britain and Italy dominate the data processing and office supply market of Papua New Guinea.
With this industry sector worth about 20 million kina a year and with growths of various sub-sectors ranging up to 100 per cent a year, it is an exciting time.
The imminent arrivals are ex pected in word processors, online banking terminals, sophisticated office computers and data communi cations between large towns, such as Port Moresby, Keita, Rabaul and Lae. Plus a computer output to microfilm (COM) bureau.
PNG’s very advanced Posts and Telegraphs Exchange at Lae will play no small role in the expected new communications facilities and indeed this American-built exchange is crucial to most plans.
It is no secret PNG’s major banks
are currently evaluating their first online banking terminals systems.
The three major user areas for all equipment remain government, commerce and finance (including banking) in that order, with govern ment said to comprise 37 per cent of all purchases.
Electric typewriters are certainly not uncommon; electronic account ing machines are numerous, the latest copiers are übiquitous and modern microfilm gear, such as manual duplicators and readers, are all there.
In the larger computer area, British supplier, International Com puters Ltd (ICL), has eclipsed the entire market with its low end main frame, the 2903 model, plus two much bigger systems with the central government.
Other important suppliers which come to mind include NCR, which has a data services base and over
1,000 machines of smaller type in stalled with a multitude of users, and PNG Printing Company of Port Moresby, which has a variety of agencies including fast-growing Olivetti.
Then there’s 3M, which set up a branch in Moresby just over a year ago, headed by Geoff Ballance, Sperry Remington, Addressograph Multigraph, Brownbuilt, Kalamazoo Business Systems and Burroughs.
PNG Printing may well be the most important locally-controlled concern here, with astute local busi nessman, Ray Thurecht, in charge.
Ray is reported to have just acquired a small light plane for his operations, which should prove a key sales aid.