Public sector needs reform to perform better: Barker

By DALE LUMA
INSTITUTE of National Affairs executive director Paul Barker says much of the PNG public sector could be reformed quite readily, to be able to deliver public goods much more effectively.
Barker said it required political will for this to happen, and to step away from the current discordant and unproductive system of patronage and institutional territoriality.
He said it, therefore, required the public to demand such reform and not to tolerate its continuation.
“PNG’s economy has been sluggish for many years and, unfortunately, formal sector employment generation even more so,” he told The National.
“In recent years, although an improved local benefit share was clearly overdue from the resources sector, and particularly from some projects with more generous taxation and overseas employment arrangements, nevertheless, the ‘take back’ position was somewhat unhelpful to a struggling economy, severely worsened by the pandemic, when applied to a series of major resource projects, notably the operating mine at Porgera, but also in delaying some of the other major resource projects.”