Commodity prices

in PNG’s favour

In recent months, world commodity prices have moved in favour of some of the Papua New Guinea mainstays, but against the interests of the smaller Islands.

By March, coffee prices were back up to the SUS2.OO a pound level, well above the SUSI.O4 quoted in the January Pacific Islands Monthly article “Coconut oil up, copper, coffee down”; coffee is PNG’s prime agricultural export.

In 1994, PNG exported $200,000,000 worth of the stuff.

Similarly, copper, another major PNG export but mined little elsewhere in the islands, in March was selling for $1.14 a pound, well over the 97 cents cited in the same article.

The export commodity which has the widest significance in the smaller islands is coconut oil as it is produced in com mercial quantities in French Polynesia, Fiji, the Solomons, Micronesia and PNG.

At the time of the earlier story, the oil price was at 47 cents a pound, one of the highest levels in recent years.

Since then, the storm-damaged planta tions in the Philippines have started to recover, and the price has dipped to 36.5 cents.

Finally, there are hopes in some of Islands with large EEZs (such as the Cooks) to harvest the manganese nodules from the bottom of the ocean; the princi pal value of these rocks lies in the cobalt they possess.

But cobalt prices have not recovered from the earlier quote of $21.75 a pound, putting a wet blanket on the sea-mining

schemes.

By David North