| Bibliography |
Odhuno, Francis; Barak, Joe Jnr; Melpa, Julian (2024) The Russian-Ukraine conflict: agrifood trade, market disruptions and policy responses in Papua New Guinea, NRI (Other Publication) (6), 28 pages, National Research Institute, Boroko, NCD, URL: https://pngnri.org/index.php/our-research/home |
| Abstract / Content summary |
Russia and Ukraine, who have been at war since February 2022, supply key agricultural produce and inputs to parts of the world where food supply is already under pressure. While Papua New Guinea (PNG) is not usually considered a food-insecure country, there are four major channels by which the war might disrupt the country’s food supply chains: energy markets and shipping routes, availability and prices of agricultural production inputs, domestic food price inflation, and trade sanctions and other financial measures. We use import data provided by the PNG Customs Service supplemented with data collected from a survey of government officials and agribusiness leaders to assess the impact of the war on the demand and supply of agricultural foods, animal feeds, fuel, fertilisers, and foreign exchange as well the policy responses at the national level. We find that changes in the prices of food were mixed: prices of meat, wheat, and cooking oil declined; while prices of maize, milk, and refined sugar increased in 2022 compared to 2021. The quantity of imported sugar remained fairly the same, but the quantity of maize import dropped significantly while the quantities of rice, wheat and meat increased to nearly match their pre-Covid pandemic levels. There was no change in the quantity of stock feed imported into PNG while Customs data suggest some increase in fertiliser imports, although survey respondent did not believe that was the case. Since food and energy imports have relatively low shares in PNG’s overall imports, the increase in world market prices of oil and gas ensured that PNG received large foreign exchange inflows that enabled the country to wade through the vagaries of the war. Hence, there were no specific policy interventions needed to counter the effect of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict in PNG. |