WB firms up ties with PNG

By FRANK ASAELI
THE World Bank is strengthening its engagement with Papua New Guinea and plans to expand analytical support to the Government, including undertaking a more in-depth review of the country’s economy in the coming months.
Andriy Storozhuk, senior economist with the World Bank’s poverty reduction and economic management department, East Asia and Pacific Region, revealed this in an email interview with The National yesterday.
As part of the stronger engagement, the World Bank was expanding its presence in the country.
Mr Storozhuk moved from Washington to the World Bank PNG Office three weeks ago.
In his early impressions about PNG, he said the Government had done a very good job of macroeconomic management in recent years.
He said that prudent monetary and fiscal policies brought down inflation from over 10% five years ago to low single digits now and led to a dramatic reduction in external debt indicators such as debt to GDP ratio and debt and debt service to exports.
“Favourable world market prices of PNG’s key export commodities helped in this good performance but the Government’s macroeconomic policies deserve a lot of credit,” Mr Storozhuk said.
As the World Bank’s vice-president James Adams, who visited recently stressed, the PNG government now needed to focus on sustaining the good macroeconomic performance achieved and translating it into broader improvement in living standards.
Mr Storozhuk said the PNG Government was well aware of reform agendas and the Government’s medium-term development strategy (MTDS) envisions measures aimed at addressing many of these challenges.
“We hope that the implementation of reforms envisioned in the MTDS will continue apace,” he said.