The Png Scene

PNG Printing has placed big em phasis on service and support for all its office agencies and there is a highly-trained team of between 10 and 15 people dedicated to this aim in Port Moresby.

Mr Jack Mol, Olivetti Australia’s divisional manager, agents and dealers, who works closely with Mr Thurecht, reports in Sydney that while Olivetti has been selling for over 15 years in PNG, it is only in the most recent three to four years that sales have really grown with PNG Printing.

This 18-year Olivetti career executive explains that all Olivetti’s office range, including typewriters, adding machines, calculators, account ing machines and now computerised systems, such as the A 4, A 5 and A 6, are sold in PNG.

“We’re budgeting for a 100 per cent increase in PNG sales this year”, Mr Mol says. “We are tremen dously impressed by the potential in PNG tor office equipment and we feel our real dividends are still in the future”.

ICL is similarly optimistic about its prospects for sales of computers in the KBO,OOO plus bracket, and it can claim users here including Steamies, Bougainville Copper (K300,000-worth), Talair and the University of Technology at Lae.

And that’s not forgetting what is probably one of the largest Islands computer installations—the two mil lion kina dual processor ICL system at the PNG Government public ser vice board which acts as a data services bureau for many government departments.

American supplier NCR, is ICL’s major computer rival in PNG. It boasts an impressive list of users, such as BPs, Carpenters, and several government departments.

Total NCR equipment population for PNG exceeds 1,000 machines, incorporating cash registers, electro mechanical and pure electronic accounting systems, electronic bank ing systems and microfiche viewers.

Two Australian computer software consulting companies which have got involved with important con tracts in PNG are Datec and PA Management, both of Sydney.

Datec is headed by a most energetic computer professional, Harry Douglas. Mr Douglas is fami liar with PNG on a personal basis and about six years ago his company won a contract to process education statistics with computers for the Education Department.

A little over a year ago Datec was involved with introducing informa tion-processing systems for the PNG National Investment and Develop ment Authority.

Two major computer suppliers who have tendered but so far haven't been successful in PNG, are IBM and Honeywell. Both tried, unsuc cessfully, for the Bougainville Copper contract, which was let in December, 1974, to ICL.

PNG is hardly an important com puter market by world criteria—it is worth significantly less than five per cent of the market in Australia for computers. And Australia com prises under one per cent of the annual world sales for computers.

But, from a modest base, the growth in PNG outstrips most other countries, including Australia, and the office area, prodded by changing technology and the need to cut costs, is changing fast indeed.