High cost of living causes poverty

National

THE rapidly rising cost of living in the country appears to be a major contributor to the high poverty rate since 2009, an official says.
Martyn Namorong is the national coordinator of the PNG Resource Governance Coalition and Secretariat for Institute of National Affair Consultative Implementation and Monitoring Council.
“Poverty levels in PNG have gotten worse over the last decade. This indicates that being able to get out of poverty for those people who are poor are near impossible,” he said.
He said urban poverty was likely to become one of the most important development challenges facing PNG and threatened progress.
A study by the Waikato University, New Zealand found that between 1996 and 2009, there was no evidence of poverty decline in PNG (John Gibson 2013).
It found that poverty instead had become more widespread with the rapid rise of urban living being the major contributing factor.
Poverty in Port Moresby worsened because a larger share of six percent of the national poverty tally joined the poor.
“Definitions of poverty in PNG tend to be debates over semantics. But the work by the Waikato University presented evidence of the child not growing as an indicator of nutritional poverty.”