Freight Services Limited is hoping for a quick solution to the shipping links between Fiji and Papua New Guinea in order to increase trade.

Freight Services managing director, Joe Taoi, said there is shipping services but this is restricted to a fortnightly service.

He said trade is rising in terms of value however they are bounded with the shipping services.

“But when you look at the shipping vitality, particularly with Papua New Guinea, the most is Port Mores by and that is still a limitation,” he said.

“We are hoping that the MSG Secretariat is going to do a study.

“When they do their study, it is going to bring about a possible solution to the barriers that we are having now in PNG.”

Mr Taoi said PNG potentially was quite a big market, what was needed was direct service.

“Fiji, for example, has direct services with Solomon Islands and Vanuatu so can you imagine that these two countries are good for our manufacturing sector,” he said.

“What we need is market access to PNG because when you look at the regularity, it is very much in place but when you look at the facilitations of the shipping services, it  is not quite adequate.”

Freight Services set-up an office in PNG in 2012 and believes there is capable growth in terms of trade between the two countries.

“We at Freight Services are quite positive although the past six months has not been quite good in Papua New Guinea,” Mr Taoi said.

“But we are hoping that the economy is going to rebound to bring us back to that.

“We have to look at PNG as a strategic partner but I think at a national level we need to build our export bases so that we can tie more direct services to PNG.”

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