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Poor data adversely affects policy making Information and good data are important keys to policy making.This is just as true for households and companies as it is for governments. And it is one of the reasons the International Monetary Fund has for some years been urging the PNG Government to improve its inadequate statistical database. One of the grey areas is something as basic as PNG’s population growth rate. Current estimates go from below 2% to around 3%. This does not seem like much, except when looked at from a point of view of raw data. At the lower figure, the current population of around six million people would be growing by 120,000 annually or by 180,000 each year. Over 10 years this would mean the population could grow by just over one million or by nearly two million, a big difference indeed. Is it true that the population in Southern Highlands is growing more than twice as fast as Shimbu or the Autonomous Region of Bougainville? Current data suggests this difference could be a virtual world record rate of 4.2% for Southern Highlands to what, in the developing world these days, would be a more normal rate of 1.9%, as in Simbu. If reliable, the data suggests Autonomous Region of Bougainville is the province with the slowest population growth of 1.5%. These figures are affected not just by the raw birth and death rates but also by the numbers of people leaving or coming into a province. Southern Highlands has gone from being the fourth most populous province in the 1980 census to No 3 in 1990 and No 1 in 2000, while Morobe has fallen from first place in 1980 and 1990 to second place in 2000. In terms of planning and good policy making this means, for example, that much more attention needs to be given to educational infrastructure – new primary and secondary schools and expanding facilities – in Southern Highlands than in other parts of the nation. Data from the Department of Education, again depending on their level of accuracy, suggests that Southern Highlands has the lowest rate of enrolment of primary school aged kids compared with all other provinces. The latest comparative 2001data suggests that only 52% of seven to 12-year old children were enrolled in South Highlands schools in that year, compared with a high of 95% in Autonomous Region of Bougainville and 91% in East New Britain. Southern Highlands also fared worst, as expected from primary enrolments, in the proportion of 13 to 16-year-olds attending secondary schools (Grades 7-10). Only 18.9% of Southern Highlands children in this age group were in school. This contrasted with 58.2% in Manus, the best performing province in this regard, with the National Capital District in second spot (55.1%) and East New Britain third (47.4%). Clearly the National Government and Southern Highlands provincial governments have to share some of the blame for this situation in what could well be PNG’s richest resource-producing area. In all likelihood, the relative situation for the Southern Highlands would have worsened since the data was compiled for 2001 and there are similar policy implications for provision of other government services. Arguably just as important as good demographic statistics are the nation’s economic data, which is the area the IMF has been most concerned about. The IMF’s PNG representative Ebrima Faal, who has returned to Washington after a stint in Port Moresby, has paid special attention to efforts to improve PNG’s database at the National Statistical Office and the Bank of Papua New Guinea. Until now, it is believed there is no econometric model of the PNG economy, a crucial predictive tool for forecasting future trends and to assess the likely impact of changes in the national budget and the performance of the private sector. Recipients of BPNG’s quarterly statistical bulletin must often wonder why the gross domestic product (GDP) data it publishes – the very last set of tables in the quarterly – ends abruptly in 2002. It has been stuck there for some considerable period. The reason, as pointed out in a recent Port Moresby address by ANZ economist Amy Auster, is that the national accounts data have not been updated since 2002. As a result much of the latest data published by BPNG, Treasury and the Department of National Planning on GDP, economic growth and the contribution of various sectors to the economy, could well contain large margins of error. Some agricultural economists have suggested estimates of food production by the subsistence sector is badly underrated, contributing further to unreliability of macroeconomic data. According to BPNG’s quarterly, GDP at constant prices, has fallen steadily from K7.9 billion in 1999 to K7.7 billion in 2002. One has to wonder when the National Statistical Office, the key collector of all kinds of data, will put together national accounts figures for 2003 and subsequent years and when these will be publicly available. It is possible that availability of more recent national accounts data will enable the Government to better assess trends in the level of public sector expenditures. In the face of highly buoyant Government revenue from the resources sector, the Government has been reluctant to act on the public sector rightsizing initiatives following completion of a report on the subject in September 2005. One can only wonder, in the face of inadequate data and analysis, whether Government services in PNG – at a national, provincial and district level – are declining in terms of overall productivity and efficiency. It could well be the case that much more funds are being spent while provision of public services are only improving marginally or not at all at a time when globalisation worldwide is forcing governments everywhere to greatly improve on service delivery. The compiling of accurate national accounts statistics is a vital tool and it is hoped the NSO and BPNG will tackle this issue in earnest.
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