Development plan review unveils key shortcomings

A review of medium-term development plans 1 and 2 over the past 10 years has highlighted important issues and challenges that needed to be addressed by the Government, says National Planning and Monitoring Minister Richard Maru.
He told Parliament on Wednesday that one of the issues noted in the review was the loss of significant capital investment opportunities.
“PNG has lost out in significant capital investment opportunities by not optimising our gains in the management of development cooperation through programme funding and delivery modalities,” Maru said.
“Despite over 50 per cent of capital expenditures which has been supported by development partners, we are not able to see tangible returns of such investment in sustainable growth of the economy and improvement in social services, where major indicators have been declining.
“The quality of our education has declined considerably in the recent years from tertiary, secondary, high school to primary schools, particularly in the areas of English, mathematics and science.
“PNG has focused less on disease prevention, but rather used more of our resources on the disease treatment, especially in primary healthcare.
“A clear example is our average immunisation coverage which is less than 40 per cent, when the global average is 80 per cent – resulting in reemergence of diseases like polio.
“We have generally focused less in improving health services in our rural districts and communities, resulting in too many preventable deaths from diseases like TB, malaria, pneumonia, and also high maternity and infant mortality rates compared to other countries in the region.”
He said other sectors were also facing similar issues.
Maru said it was critically important that both the PNG Government and development partners work more closely to arrest this trend and strategically make investments to realise better returns of capital investment.