Charles Abel's 100 day plan needs a people focus
15 August 2017
PAUL FLANAGAN | PNG Economics
THE new Papua New Guinea government is proposing a 100 day plan. What should this consider?
A good national plan begins by fully understanding the challenges and opportunities facing its people.
This understanding is improved by seeing how a country is going relative to its neighbours (we economists call this comparative public policy analysis).
One of the best sources of up-to-date information on PNG’s development performance, and how it compares with other Asia-Pacific countries, is the Asian Development Bank’s Basic Statistics publication.
It shows that PNG still faces massive development challenges. It is saddening to see hat PNG so often ranks at the very bottom in the region. This illustrates that PNG’s politicians have been failing their people.
On opportunities, PNG leads the world in key areas such as its cultural richness (1st), the extent of its tropical forests (3rd for the entire island) and its extraordinary biodiversity (PNG is one of the world’s 17 megadiverse countries).
In terms of mineral and petroleum wealth, it does fairly poorly – even in LNG its ranks 47th and in petroleum 62nd.
In future, PNG needs to change its self-image of “mountains of gold in seas of oil”. This myth (at least in world terms) has delivered appalling development outcomes for PNG. There are much better development paths.
A better self-image would be “mountains of culture in rich seas of diversity” or something similar. (Suggestions would be welcome – but about people, not minerals).
I hope the 100 day plan takes a much more people-orientated approach to PNG’s development - this is a key lesson from failed economic development to date.
May PNG’s new politicians do much better.
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