Papua New Guinea (PNG) is to establish a state marketing agency (SMA) to help promote the country’s timber trade.
The SMA will be developed under the National Forest Policy, and will be established by June according to Belden Namah, the minister of forests.
It will work with PNG’s existing timber trade to create marketing and promotional channels, and will exist alongside the country’s state purchase option which allows the government to buy 25% of export volumes for resale in order to manage log prices.
Figures have revealed that PNG’s log prices remained stable during the first three weeks of 2008, with export volumes, including December 2007, reaching 242,866m³.
