Director wants policies underpinned by facts

 POLICY making in the economic and business sectors must be underpinned by facts elicited through research, National Research Institute director Dr Charles Yala says.

He thanked Bank of Papua New Guinea for engaging in research since 2006 to form the basis for its traditional role of formulating monetary policy.

Yala said it was very important that police be in line with researched facts so that policies based on research could be seen to be working in the economy.

The BPNG launched two working papers “Demand for money in PNG” by BPNG staff Tanu Irau, and “Estimating an aggregate import demand function for PNG” by Gail Sabok and BPNG staff Boniface Aipi. 

Irau said the study of money demand “seeks to establish whether the function is stable for the concerned economy”.

 If the function is stable, then its application in monetary policy can exert a predictable influence on the real economy because the quantity of money is predictably related to a set of variables linking money to the real sector of the economy,” Irau said

Aipi, the manager of the research projects unit at the BPNG,  said the paper was intended to provide the results of research undertaken with the bank to its staff, interested institutions and the general public.