Impediments to Vision 2050

 Introduction

THE Papua New Guinea Vision 2050 (PNG Vision 2050) (Government of PNG, 2009) envisages that by the year 2050 (in 35 years), PNG will be a smart, wise, fair, healthy and happy society.  

The PNG Vision 2050 is a 40-year development plan.  The PNG Development Strategic Plan 2010-2030 (PNG DSP 2010-2030) (Department of National Planning and Monitoring, 2010) intends for Papua New Guinea to achieve a ‘middle income’ country status by the year 2030 (in 16 years).  

The PNG DSP 2010-2030 is a 20-year development plan.  

The former contains the vision statement, while the latter the strategies that facilitate the development plan and project initiatives.  

Both documents are complementary. They intend to project PNG to develop to a stage where it would take its place among the top 50 countries on the United Nations’ Human Development Index (HDI) and subsequently be classified as a prosperous country or a ‘middle income country’.

Both the PNG Vision 2050 and PNG DSP 2010-2030 were derived from the Constitution’s National Goals and Directive Principles and the principles of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).  

As a way of implementing the PNG Vision 2050 and PNG DSP 2010-2030, all state agencies, including government departments, provincial administrations, state-owned enterprises, commodity boards, authorities and universities were to take their cue from the vision statement and development strategies by aligning their individual agency’s development plans (and translated into annual plans, quarterly plans, monthly plans and daily work plans).  

The intention to cascade all lower plans using ‘cascading logic’ to align their plans to PNG Vision 2050 and PNG DSP 2010-2030 is an honourable one.  

This means all state agencies, statutory authorities/commissions, government departments, provincial and district administrations were to align their corporate and strategic plans to the PNG Vision 2050 and PNG DSP 2010-2030.

The PNG DSP 2010-2030 is further broken down into five-year Medium Term Development Plans (MTDPs) that prioritise projects with appropriate funding to go with each activity that is correctly aligned to PNG Vision 2050.  

The first year of implementing the PNG Vision 2050 was in 2011 and the first medium term development plan to take carriage of PNG Vision 2050 aspirations was captured under MTDP 2011-2015.  

The year 2014 is supposed to be the fourth year of implementation of PNG Vision 2050.  

The first MTDP 2011-2015 capturing PNG Vision 2050 has been reviewed and hopefully the findings from that review should help frame the second MTDP 2016-2020. 

The first 10-year evaluation of the impact indicators is planned to take place in 2020, half way through implementing PNG DSP 2010-2030 and 30 years into implementing PNG Vision 2050.

While that process is in motion, some impediments are obvious from the way events unfold in the first MTDP period.  

Before the impediments are highlighted, a brief look at some points of information is valuable.  

The PNG Vision 2050 is a 40-year vision statement for PNG to become a prosperous (or smart, wise, fair, healthy and happy) society in year 2050. This year, 2015, marks the fortieth anniversary of PNG’s independence and the conclusion of the first MTDP 2011-2015. 

While the years tick from one MTDP to another, the Year 2050 is the target year when PNG envisages creating a smart, wise, fair, healthy and happy society.  

Critical but valuable actions have not been taken by servants, agents, and instrumentalities of the State.

I was involved in the formulation of the PNG Vision 2050 as a technical advisor and I took a personal interest to observe many irregularities and impediments from the time PNG Vision 2050 was launched in 2009. 

Just some of the impediments are highlighted here for serious consideration at this symposium to provide further clarity and recommendations towards refining the vision and plan for PNG to take its place in the world as a prosperous nation where its current socio-economic indicators are drastically improved.

Impediments observed

Personal observation suggests that while the spirit of the PNG Vision 2050 is to create a smart, wise, fair, healthy and happy or prosperous society, there are a number of impediments that must be addressed over the first MTDP period (within the next 12 months) and strategically carry that resolve over with refinements into the second MTDP in order to further improve in the second MTDP (2016-2020) cycle.  The impediments observed (Sinebare 2014) are:

• 1: Government departments, State authorities/agencies, and provincial/district administrations have yet to fully align their respective development plans (corporate plans, strategic plans, business plans, work plans) to the PNG Vision 2050 as per the directional statement for strategic planning and implementation. Consequently, public resources are allocated or prioritised for areas (projects) outside of the PNG Vision 2050 because the projects are not aligned to achieving PNG Vision 2050.
• 2: Bureaucratic leaders (heads of government departments, State authorities/agencies) are not held accountable for failing to comply with the directions to align agency plans to the PNG Vision 2050. Bureaucratic leaders are indifferent to the PNG Vision 2050.  Bureaucratic leaders are showing the ‘I don’t-care’ attitude because they are placed in that role for convenience and not necessarily for helping the nation to strive for prosperity for the greater majority of the people as espoused in the national vision.
• 3: Political leaders are yet to be converted to accept the ideals of the PNG Vision 2050.  Many politicians have yet to align their thinking and development ideas in rhythm with PNG Vision 2050. Already an ‘addendum’ was proposed to improve the PNG Vision 2050, which is healthy, to refine and reform. The potential for regular review and improvement is there through the five-year MTDP reviews and the anticipated 10-year impact evaluations planned for 2020, 2030, 2040, and 2050. The first of such a review takes place in 2020 and the critical baseline information to measure the country’s development progress are not being collected. Such critical baseline information is still sketchy given the country’s lack of capacity for appropriate socio-economic data collection and storage.
• 4: Bureaucratic leaders are yet to align their respective development plans and priorities towards achieving the PNG Vision 2050. The general public in PNG don’t even know what PNG Vision 2050 is all about.  The public hear about the name PNG Vision 2050 but are pretty ignorant of the details.  In order to drive PNG Vision 2050, critical masses of Papua New Guineans are needed and strategic leaders in both political and bureaucratic levels are essential. Bureaucratic leaders merely pay lip service in the first five years of the implementation of the PNG Vision 2050. Several bureaucratic leaders have criticised the PNG Vision 2050 as a ‘pipe-dream’, lacking implementation strategies and they have not taken up the opportunity to strategise for implementation in their own organisation.  They have not even come up with an equally formidable alternative visioning.
• 5: Many political parties have yet to align their political party policies to PNG Vision 2050.  Some political parties oppose the PNG Vision 2050 because it was the brainchild of the National Alliance Party but they chose to remain silent and/or fail to provide an alternative long-term vision.  Political parties have their own views of how they intend to make PNG prosperous but they have not clearly stated where they are in terms of PNG Vision 2050.  PNG political parties and their development policies are incongruent to the PNG Vision 2050 and they have not even come up with an alternative vision by the fifth year of implementation.  This is critical if they can align their policies with PNG Vision 2050 or even formulate an alternative vision before the 2017 General Election.
• 6: The person whose future the PNG Vision 2050 is all about is the current cohort of students and the young people whose ages from zero to 25 years of age. The current students have very limited knowledge about PNG Vision 2050 when in reality the vision is going to directly impact on them.  

A 10-year-old child in primary school in 2015 will be 45-years-old in 2050. A child born in 2015 will be 35-years-old in 2050.  

A 20-year-old university student this year will be 55-years-old by the year 2050.  

A 40-year-old current leader (bureaucratic or political) will be 76 -years-old.  

On the other hand, many of the current leaders (bureaucratic or political) may not be alive in 35 years.  

And that is the reason why the current cohort of students in both the public and private school systems, including universities and colleges, must be given opportunities to learn about PNG Vision 2050.  

The current generation of students will be the ones who will occupy leadership and decision-making roles in the next 35 years to run this country in business, politics, bureaucracy, and till the land as farmers and harvest the sea as fishermen/women.  

The current students must be inspired and their curiosity invoked to eventually make their contributions toward PNG Vision 2050 when they are tasked to do so.