by BRIAN GOMEZ
Big task ahead for next government

ONE of the most important tasks for the next government is the need for a tough assessment of recent supplementary budget spending that has amounted to a massive K2.4 billion.
This should be the case even if the Somare-led National Alliance is returned to office because proper accounting and a redoubled effort to ensure that every toea is properly used will have a critical bearing on the country’s future.
These funds appear to be windfall earnings of unprecedented proportions since commodity prices are expected to return to more normal levels.
They are literally a national dividend of the population at large.
Given the vast scope of budget funding for numerous big and small projects, it is not unusual for various interest groups to be asserting claims of all kinds and, for the sake of maximum impact, bureaucratic interference should be kept to a minimum.
Already there are suggestions that some government instrumentalities want to set up special units to oversee this extra spending even though, in many cases, the recipients already have good systems in place to carry out their own tendering and monitoring processes.
The government has done well to place the windfall revenues outside of normal budget processes for a very good reason – they would otherwise become sustainable activities once government revenues fall.
But a whole range of activities are being promoted in terms of badly needed rehabilitation and maintenance of various facilities on a one-off basis in the hope that the benefits flowing from them would enjoy a permanency.
This is the same reason why large numbers of bureaucrats should not be suddenly added to the public sector to “oversee” the new expenditures though, certainly, a good oversight is needed in order to MINIMISE corruption and wastage.
One of the key tasks of the review of the “windfall” expenditures is to determine whether there should be some scaling back in some projects or, indeed, whether some activities should be postponed and others undertaken instead.
This is all part of good planning, monitoring and implementation.
For example, have funds been allocated for some projects that just cannot be implemented in a meaningful timeframe because of lack of various resources, including skilled personnel, to complete them.
Such projects should be deferred so that funds can be used in areas that will have a more immediate impact.

Creating jobs
One area that has been badly ignored is the whole area of employment generation. Over the next five to 10 years, PNG will need thousands of skilled and unskilled workers for various projects, but little thought has been given to manpower planning and training.
At the moment two PNG-based companies have made a big commitment to training of PNG workers – Ok Tedi Mining Ltd in Tabubil and Oil Search in Kutubu.
There are also a variety of PNG government-run and private educational bodies in the area of technical and skills training, not forgetting the traditional role played by the University of Technology in Lae.
When construction begins on the first LNG plant, possibly at the Konebada Petroleum Park, some 5,000 skilled workers will be required and, on present plans, up to 80% of them have to be recruited abroad.
Would it be too hard to ensure that in the next three years enough people are trained so that every job requiring plumbers, metal workers, fitters and turners, carpenters and others skilled tradesmen are Papua New Guineans?
Many tradespeople are now being trained at the government-approved OTML facility in Tabubil.
Could these numbers be doubled or tripled with some government grants or subsidies?
Oil Search has built an academy for petroleum-related skills training in Kutubu.
Much of this training will be relevant to the LNG project or projects.
Is it worthwhile to consider special incentives to encourage companies themselves to conduct training either here or overseas?
New resource projects that are being set up will require many highly skilled people to operate electronic control processes.
Already we have many such operations that are maintained and run largely by Papua New Guineans in plants owned by OTML, Lihir Gold, the Porgera Joint Venture and New Britain Palm Oil.
We often discuss how dismal the country’s economic performance has been overall since independence and maybe this camouflages the fact there has also been immense progress in some areas.
Some of our pilots are among the best in the world; there are also accountants, lawyers, doctors, geologists, scientists and scholars that would do any nation proud.
Without some thorough planning and execution of these plans a huge potential boost for the nation from the impending resources boom could be lost.
This is only one part of a very important picture.
Other big opportunities will also be lost if the government does not do its utmost to assist the private sector to capitalise on the various projects that are being planned.
If steel fabrication companies and other manufacturers or service providers can expand their businesses to meet the impending demand, this will also create an additional pool of job creation opportunities.
When Western Australia built its first natural gas/LNG operation in the 1980s, the state government went to great lengths to capitalise on potential job creation.
The chief executive (elect) for InterOil’s Liquid Niugini Energy, Dr Jack Hamilton, recently told The National that although only 250 jobs were created on the initial LNG project on the North West Shelf, this eventually, in a period of seven years, generated 90,000 jobs around Australia.
“In a developing country the multiplier effects would be even larger,” he said.
With proper foresight and planning this is the potential being generated for Papua New Guinea but, unfortunately, until now the focus has been on the glamorous bits of big spending and huge increases in export revenues.
Much more needs to be done on bread and butter issues of how PNG’s industrial and services sector can be given a big and permanent boost and how unprecedented numbers of Papua New Guineans can enter the formal sector in the shortest possible time.