A surge in oil and gold imports from Papua New Guinea to Australia gave PNG a substantial trade surplus in the last financial year.
The newspaper, The National, reports the new Australian high commissioner to PNG, Chris Moraitis, as saying Australia's exports to PNG have grown strongly, but the expansion in PNG's exports to Australia has been even more marked.
PNG in the period exported around two billion US dollars of products to Australia, giving it a trade surplus of more than seven hundred million US dollars.
Mr Moraitis says the dramatic increase essentially reflects a leap in imports of crude oil and gold, which account for around 96 percent of Australia's purchases from PNG.
