Property alleviation reads better

ONE of the biggest intervention programmes today for PNG among donor nations and agencies is “poverty alleviation”.
That should rightly read “property alleviation”.
That is because this nation is not poor. It is rich.
What it has not been able to do is to find a way to mobilise all that the people own and to quantify and value all the productive efforts of its people.
What it needs to do is to transform what is presently worthless property into capital forming assets.
This is not merely an academic assertion.
In the accounting books of agencies like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Asian Development Bank, PNG is worth a little more than K10 billion.
That is the total worth of all the recorded economic activities in PNG, or what they refer to as gross domestic product (GDP).
The GDP might be tripled now with major projects such as the Ramu nickel cobalt mine and the two liquefied natural gas projects.
Still, the unrecorded economic activities and assets that are not entered into the assets registers of these global institutions are worth many billions of kina more in PNG.
PNG’s worth on paper is only 3% of the land and upon a few big resource projects.
The rest of the 97% of the country remains in traditional customary hands and, therefore, well outside the accounting books and assets registers of modern PNG.
All of the economic activities on customary land, which sustains the livelihood of three quarters of the nation’s citizens remains outside the codified and legalised economic system of PNG. Only forestry projects, some fisheries, a very few big agricultural and mining and petroleum projects which happen on customary land is accounted for.
If the 97% of landmass were measured and entered into the asset register of this nation, PNG’s national wealth will increase over night by billions more. This is confirmed by the land reform scenario presented in Vision 2050.
By 2050, PNG’s real GDP is projected to reach K15 billion, excluding contributions from the LNG project and any land reform.
Should land reform be undertaken this year and, if only 3% of customary land were to be brought into production in the formal sector, this will translate into an additional K4.5 billion of GDP. There will be broad-based higher investment and exports and consumption in the non-mineral and hydrocarbon sectors such as agriculture, forestry, fisheries, manufacturing and services.
Per capital income is projected in the vision to grow from the current K800 to K2,420 by 2020.
If even greater parts of customary land were to be mobilised into capital forming assets, imagine how PNG would be transformed overnight.
PNG could easily become a rich country and the strategic goals of Vision 2050 to create a “smart, wise, fair, healthy and happy” people would not just be pipe dreams but a very real possibility.
What the government needs to do is to concentrate far greater resources on how to mobilise land.
While the vision has seven pillars, it is unfortunate that mobilising land does not happen to be one of them.
That would be a tragic oversight because everything that happens in the country happens on land.
If there is no land for development purposes, nothing can be done. PNG has hundreds of thousands of acres of land available. The trick is to convince our people, and arrive at the formula, that they can accept, that will make traditional landowning groups full participants in economic activities on their land.
That is the last challenge left.
Until and unless the land question is resolved, little else will move.
The government need not legislate any more than is necessary.
Much of the property laws of Western nations developed from recognising customs.
Our own constitution instructs us to formalise our customs into laws. We need collaboration between social scientists, lawyers and legislators to “discover” the law by linking the practices existing in the extra-legal sector to the formal legal principles.
To ignore the extra-legal practices of the people, which is by far the more popular, which is easily understood, widely applied and cheaper, would be foolish.