Time to get down to business

The National Editorial

THE 11th Parliament meets tomorrow.
The order of business will be the election of the Speaker and, following a brief interval to allow for the Speaker to be sworn in at the Government House, there will be elected the next Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea.
Parliament will then adjourn for a week, after which, the new Government will introduce its policies and programmes for the next five years.
What will be those policies and programmes?
After the chaos of the General Election 2022 coming at the end of the double ravages of a global pandemic and the resulting economic depression, Papua New Guinea faces serious social and economic issues.
Existing stresses upon resources and management are enormous and stem from:

  • RAPID population growth;
  • LOW economic growth;
  • GROWING unemployment;
  • STAGNANT investment climate;
  • GROWING lawlessness and unsafe communities;
  • BAD government and lack of transparency and accountability;
  • LACK of physical and social infrastructure;
  • LIMITED land access;
  • LIMITED housing; and,
  • LIMITED access to power and energy.

Any policy by the incoming government must embrace these key elements into its socio-economic policies and planning matrix.
The incoming Government must aim to:
Grow an economy that is sustainable and broad based with an SME based agricultural and industrial sector;
Attract foreign direct investment but develop legal and fiscal regimes that will spread the benefits of investment well including via a well-articulated national content plan;
Build healthy and safe communities;
Provide for universal and quality education at the one end and provide for a productive population coming out at the other end;
Mobilise customary land and to walk extensive informal economy over into the small and shrinking formal economy; and
Take care to include culture, the environment and history in all government works because they give the nation its identity among the world of nations.
Past exertions have been started off well at the articulation and launching end but have fizzled out at the implementation and sustainability end.
Government policies and programs must be realistic, based on real needs, and be affordable.
A Green Revolution was launched in 2008 by the late Grand Chief Sir Michael Somare to revive the agriculture department in a big way.
Within the year it lost drive and by the next year was dead in the water.
An expensive project initiated by the Department of Communication and Information to link up all departments, touted to cost K200 million and assisted by Chinese firm, Huawei got a lot of hype and whether or not the money was actually obtained or committed, the project was still born.
The K200 million National Identification project was moved between departments and there was a lot of enthusiasm but today NID is not a big issue.
It seems to have lost drive.
The drive to provide Special Economic Zones around the country has sucked up so much money from the budget without establishing a single operating SEZ.
Perhaps because of the money, that program has also been moved around several departments.
It is a scandal.
SMEs were allocated K200 million to be distributed through the National Development Bank and BSP but to date the former does not seem to have done any disbursement.
Many more policies and programs have been designed and launched at great cost but the
finish has rarely been obtained or good.
If the next Parliament and the next Government are to be any different, it will not be in the quality of the policies and programmes they announce in the next few days, but in the delivery of them across the full five year term of the 11th Parliament.