Papua New Guinea’s exports to China reached US$232 million in June, a 49% increase on the same month a year earlier, according to BSP Financial Group’s trade and foreign exchange insights, presented by Group General Manager Corporate Banking Daniel Faunt.
The figure annualises to roughly US$2.78 billion. United Nations COMTRADE data recorded PNG’s exports to China at US$1.94 billion for 2023, making the June run-rate about 43% higher than the last independently documented year.
Working backwards from the stated growth rate, June 2025 exports were approximately US$155.7 million, which annualises to US$1.87 billion and sits within 4% of the COMTRADE reading.
Nickel is carrying the increase
Faunt attributed the growth to petroleum gas, nickel and rough wood, and put the rise in nickel exports alone above 200% year on year.
Volume data supports the direction. Nickel 28, which holds an 8.56% joint venture interest in the Ramu nickel-cobalt operation in Madang Province, reported fourth-quarter 2025 output of 8,231 tonnes of contained nickel in mixed hydroxide precipitate, against 5,952 tonnes in the same quarter of 2024. That is a 38.3% increase.
Nickel 28 is targeting 33,100 tonnes of contained nickel and 3,100 tonnes of contained cobalt from Ramu across calendar 2026, with no shutdowns scheduled beyond annual maintenance. Ramu is operated by China’s Metallurgical Corporation of China, which holds 85% alongside partners, with PNG’s Mineral Resources Development Company on 6.44%.
Price accounts for the balance. Nickel 28 reported that cobalt prices rose sharply through the second half of 2025 and into 2026, with nickel following off recent lows, and attributed the move largely to policy decisions by the governments of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia.
COMTRADE put PNG’s nickel exports to China at US$309.76 million in 2023, or 16% of the total. Mineral fuels accounted for US$1.23 billion, or 63.4%. A tripling of the nickel line against a flat gas line would move the total by roughly a third on its own.
BSP’s materials refer to nickel mats. Ramu ships mixed hydroxide precipitate rather than matte, according to Nickel 28’s reporting, though nickel mattes is a distinct customs heading under HS 7501, so the term may be accurate as a trade classification while describing a different physical product.
Three kina out for every one in
BSP put imports from China at US$1.3 billion, a figure that matches COMTRADE’s US$1.33 billion reading for China’s exports to PNG in 2024.
The bank also put PNG’s total exports to China above US$4 billion without naming the dataset or the period covered. That figure sits 44% above the run-rate implied by BSP’s own June number, and would represent 41.5% of PNG’s total merchandise exports of roughly US$9.65 billion in World Bank WITS data, against 20.1% on the COMTRADE reading. BSP describes the resulting US$2.7 billion surplus as accruing over the years of trade between the two countries, which would make the export figure cumulative rather than annual.
On the figures as presented, PNG exports roughly three dollars of goods to China for every one it imports, a coverage ratio of 3.1 to 1.
What the surplus does and does not tell you
Export receipts in hard currency are the primary source of the foreign exchange inflows that ease PNG’s standing import-cover constraint. BSP did not disclose what share of China-bound receipts is repatriated to PNG rather than retained offshore, which is the number that determines how much of any surplus reaches the domestic kina market.
The bank’s four separate dollar-to-kina conversions imply rates ranging from 4.259 to 4.308 kina per dollar, a spread of 1.1%.
Imports from China run to construction machinery, rice and industrial equipment. BSP said its forward priorities are deepening partnerships in energy, agriculture, manufacturing and infrastructure, widening SME participation in bilateral trade, and strengthening institutional cooperation on investment flows.
October
Papua New Guinea and China will hold the inaugural PNG-China Business Forum and Trade Expo in Guangzhou on 20 and 21 October 2026, International Trade and Investment Minister Richard Maru announced on 27 May. Maru said it would be the first business forum jointly hosted by the two countries after 50 years of bilateral relations, and that the event is expected to rotate annually. The National reported it is expected to draw more than 1,000 participants.
PNG has run an equivalent forum with Australia for 41 years. BSP is a sponsor of the China one. The next verifiable test of the June figure is PNG’s own trade data for the second half of 2026.
