Hartley said PNG's political situation had stabilised since 2003 and the country was more stable than many African and South American nations, according to a report in Malaysian online newspaper The Edge Daily.

Many corporations around the world believed that PNG's political situation was so fragile that the country would collapse into a civil war, according to Hartley. But PNG's 600 clans were very unlikely to coalesce into major groupings that could take part in a civil war, he said.

He was addressing a luncheon at the Asian Political Risk Insurance, Trade Credit Insurance, Project, Trade and Commodity Finance summit in Kuala Lumpur.