PNG has huge debt to repay

PAPUA New Guinea is a sovereign country but it is an independent institution operating in collaboration with other sovereign states and multilateral institutions to achieve development.
However, at present, PNG is facing three major crises: an institutional crisis; a fiscal crisis; and, a health crisis.
Poor leadership, governance and management, compounded by the poor quality of education, is a major institutional crisis PNG is facing since Independence.
That has significantly eroded the institutional capacity of PNG.
The country is vulnerable.
Papua New Guinea is weak to pursue meaningful development for the people under the five national goals and directive principles enshrined in our Constitution.
It is unable to manage unforeseeable crises in the future.
The slush fund annual budgets that have been passed yearly since Independence meant that funds allocated for development spending have been diverted to projects that do not generate commercial and economic returns.
The outcome is the Government being unable to raise sufficient tax and non-tax revenues to fund the national budget.
This has forced the Government to continue borrowing from domestic and external sources to fund the budget deficits, resulting in our national debt ballooning to over K50 billion at the moment.
This is a major fiscal crisis and the people of PNG are left wondering about who will help them pay off this mammoth debt.
PNG is now facing a major health crisis with deteriorating health services.
It has been compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic and its mutant variants spreading globally.
The institutional and fiscal crises have put PNG in a very fragile state to manage the Covid-19 pandemic.
The International Monetary Fund and other multilateral institutions and donors have contributed well over K1 billion to assist PNG manage the Covid-19 pandemic.
However, nobody knows where this money went or how it was spent.

Concerned Citizen,
Pom