Review commission’s land, garbage charges

IT has been noted that land and garbage rates charged by the National Capital District Commission (NCDC) have been increasing every year.
These are fixed municipal charges, but the justification for their annual increase remains a mystery.
The assessment criteria used in determining land and garbage rates the owner of a house or property can pay should be reviewed.
The present assessment criteria are high, medium, low covenant houses for properties that occupied by their owners or rented out to tenants for use.
For commercial and other properties, their assessment criteria are either unknown or not available to the public. The issue regarding these assessment criteria is that their economic and commercial rational is not known.
It causes one to wonder how the NCDC sets the annual land and garbage rates.
Economic theory informs us that as a village, town or city develops, the demand for resources such as land, water, electricity, schools, and so forth by its resident’s increases.
This development means there is a corresponding increase in population, which is adding more demand on the use of these resources.
As demand increases, the cost of providing the resource also increases.
Therefore, the price of the resource should also be increased to recover the cost.
Well, this is true for a product or service.
It is however, not true for the development of a city.
For a city, as its population increases, the unit cost of providing a fix-cost municipal service actually declines over time.
That should be the case for NCDC charges, because Port Moresby has seen a rapid increase in its population.
Instead, the charges are increasing each year.
The Independent Consumer and Competition Commission (ICCC) should intervene and review the method and justification used by the NCDC to set the annual land and garbage rates.
The reason is that NCDC is a State body and its charges should be reviewed by ICCC.

Concerned