SOCIETAL TRENDS IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA

In many indicators, Papua New Guinea’s rapid population growth is outpacing development progress. Service delivery across the country is in decline. I thought the Government will do a lot of changes but no progress in  Growing urbanization is increasing the burden on service providers as people who move from rural areas generally lose access to their customary land and become less self-sufficient. More than 40 percent of the population is under the age of 20.

The resulting youth bulge is outstripping very limited formal sector employment opportunities. The needs of the private sector are evolving, and skills development is critical. New immigrant groups are moving into Port Moresby from Rural Areas looking for employment opportunities and  Lots of Foreigners migrating into Papua New Guinea and taking over small and medium businesses that have typically been run by locals, adding further societal and employment pressures.

This paper will chart these trends in Papua New Guinea, and the impact they will have on political stability, policymaking and development. It will look at trends in service delivery, employment, and skills development. It will look at the role of new immigrants in Papua New Guinea and future workforce capacity, and assess the government’s capacity to deal with these challenges.

 

SNAPSHOT OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA

 

TABLE 1: PAPUA NEW GUINEA AT A GLANCE

Land area	461,937 km2
Marine jurisdiction	3.1 million km2
Population	8.251 million (est) [1]
Population growth rate	3.1% (2015)
Human Development Index	0.516 (2015), ranked 154 out of 188 countries [2]
GDP	US$ 21.2 billion (2015) [3]
GDP growth rate	2.5% (2017) [4]
GDP per capita	US$ 2,745 (2015) [5]
Structure of economy (top 5)	Extractive industry: 24%; Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing: 18%; Retail trade: 10%; Construction: 8%; Administrative and Support services: 7% (2016) [6]
Composition of exports (top 5)	LNG: 33%; Gold: 27%; Agricultural, marine and other non-mineral: 12%; Oil/petroleum: 8%; Nickel/copper/cobalt: 8% (2016) [7]
Poverty (Basic Needs Poverty)	39.9% (2009) [8]
Employment	61.6% (2009) [9]
Infant Mortality Rate	58/1,000 (2009) [10]
Maternal Mortality Rate	733/100,000 (2009) [11]
HIV/AIDS Prevalence Rate	0.8% (2015) [12]
Gender Inequality Index	0.595 (2015), ranked 143 out of 157 countries [13]
Women in Parliament	0 (2017, decreased from 3 in 2012 elections)
Primary enrolment rate	50.9% (net 2009) [14]
Secondary enrolment rate	28.1% (net 2009) [15]
Access to potable water	25.8% (2009) [16]

 

On a wide range of social indicators Papua New Guinea remains one of the world’s most underdeveloped nations. More than a decade of strong economic growth has not improved the welfare of most Papua New Guineans. GDP per capita in Papua New Guinea is expected to reach 2500.00 USD by the end of 2021, according to Trading Economics global macro models and analysts expectations. In the long-term, the Papua New Guinea GDP per capita is projected to trend around 2650.00 USD in 2022, according to our econometric models. GDP per capita is little different from that at independence 42 years ago. Incomes are also growing increasingly unequal, meaning that some are likely to be significantly worse off. Papua New Guinea will need decades more high and inclusive growth to offset its rapidly growing population. There will need to be better implementation of progressive social policies to translate inconsistent benefits of natural resource wealth to an improved standard of living for all people.

Improving Papua New Guinean welfare is not easy. It is a very young country made up of a patchwork of thousands of different cultures, its people largely living in rural areas, many of which are relatively inaccessible. The tension between traditional society, which still underpins the welfare system for most of the population, and the ‘modern’ world makes economic, social, environmental, and cultural development in Papua New Guinea complex. Papua New Guinean identity remains tenuous, with most citizens retaining a stronger allegiance to, and trust in, sub-national groupings, notably clans or wantoks, than at a national level.

In an effort to address these challenges, Papua New Guinea has developed a complex and decentralised system of government, with three tiers of government (national, provincial, and local), and four levels of administration (national, provincial, district, and Local Level Government (LLG)). In recent years District Development Authorities, chaired by the local MP and including the council presidents, have emerged as another prominent tier of government, often better resourced than other decentralised levels. In total the country is divided into four regions, 22 provinces (plus the National Capital District), 90 districts and 319 LLGs. The national government also maintains 33 ministries and over 140 departments and agencies, some with seemingly overlapping responsibilities and unclear or ambiguous lines of reporting. This has created significant confusion about who is responsible for what, making it difficult for communities to hold leadership to account:

Altogether the Auditor General is expected to audit nearly 1000 public institutions each year, including state-owned enterprises. Despite this proliferation of agencies, the public service is not much larger than at independence, while the population has nearly tripled, with some functions, such as police capacity, particularly lagging on a per capita basis.

Papua New Guinea is also a pluralistic nation. Its urban centres do not reflect the lifestyles, employment practices, and incomes of the 88 per cent of the population that live in rural areas. The United Nations Development Programme estimates Papua New Guinea to have the second-highest rural-urban population balance in the world after Burundi. [18] PNG’s Director of the Office of Urbanisation notes that this partly reflects the outdated delineation of urban boundaries as towns and cities have grown, with urban populations having expanded significantly over recent years. [19]

According to best available evidence, the proportion of the population living below the basic needs poverty line rose from 34 per cent in 1996 to 36.2 per cent in 2009/10, meaning approximately 2.43 million people are living in hardship. [20] The majority of the population live in areas of poor infrastructure and often rugged terrain, which gives them little or no access to basic services, such as health, education, sanitation, and safe drinking water.

Poverty remains a contested concept in Papua New Guinea. The abject poverty seen in many parts of the world is largely absent from Papua New Guinea, or at least hidden by subsistence food production which also masks the high levels of malnutrition and stunting prevalent in rural Papua New Guinea. [21] The poverty experienced by more than 2.4 million people in Papua New Guinea is rather one of opportunity and income. Papua New Guinea has yet to meet any of the Millennium Development Goals.

 

SERVICE DELIVERY
Services are delivered in Papua New Guinea through a patchwork of government agencies, non-government organisations and, critically, church and faith-based organisations. The country benefits from a very strong network of churches that, with government funding, run about half of the country’s health and education systems, particularly in rural areas. [22] Services across many parts of the country are perceived to have diminished over the past two decades. Progressive cash shortages, a weakening of institutional capabilities, the marginalisation of government departments, , growing prevalence of corrupt practices (including in public procurement) and lack of clarity with poor coordination of responsibilities present enormous challenges. These combine with inadequate investment in education and skills development from the mid-1990s and decline in recruitment and mentoring of successor staff, leading to an erosion of skills in the service delivery workforce, and the decline of infrastructure and materials. All these factors contribute to the shrinking role of the state.

The PNG Government’s Vision 2050 report notes that “PNG’s global Human Development Indicators (HDI) ranking dropped from 128 out of 175 countries in 1994 to 145 out of 179 countries in 2005. This reflects our worsening social indicators and marked improvements in other countries’ socioeconomic indicators.” [23] Papua New Guinea’s HDI ranking puts it higher than only Timor-Leste and Afghanistan in the Asia-Pacific region.

A recent National Research Institute-Australian National University survey of schools and health clinics around Papua New Guinea, in both rural and urban areas, found a more nuanced and mixed progress in 2012 compared to 2002. [24] Schools were on average in better condition and had more students and teachers. Health clinics on the other hand showed no growth at all in the number of patients using them, despite population growth of about 30 per cent over the decade. The O’Neill government’s commitments to free health and education for all PNG citizens have yet to translate into tangible improvements.

Expenditure in critical services, as well as vital infrastructure that supports service delivery, has also been slashed in recent years as the government battles considerable fiscal challenges and cash shortages and seems unduly focused on urban ‘status’ projects (notably the Pacific Games and APEC 2018).

HEALTH
Papua New Guinea’s human capital development and labour productivity are hindered by deficiencies in basic nutrition, health, and education. The overall state of citizen health in Papua New Guinea is poor, and has declined since 1975. Papua New Guinea has the lowest level of health care expenditure in the region, equivalent to about 3.5 per cent of GDP in 2014. [25] Clinic capacity is significantly impaired — 30 per cent of staff are not paid on time, 43 per cent of clinics need significant maintenance, 60 per cent do not have electricity or refrigeration, 73 per cent conduct no patrols in the local community. [26] Urban health infrastructure is also not faring well, with marginal investment despite growing urban populations. The Asian Development Bank has forecast that per capita spending on health in 2005 was half what it had been in 1975. [27]

With strong support from development partners, non-government organisations and the private sector, some progress has been achieved in restraining the country’s burgeoning HIV/AIDS infection rate, malaria incidence, and by making anti-retroviral drugs available. Tuberculosis, where Papua New Guinea exhibits some of the highest rates in the world with an increasing prevalence of multi-drug resistant strains, and other diseases strain the poor health infrastructure. Life expectancy is increasing, but is still the lowest in the region. Although statistics are unreliable, Papua New Guinea does appear to have achieved a steady decline in under-five mortality rates during the last two decades, but the rate of reduction is much lower than in other Asian countries. If health indicators are not improved soon there is considerable risk that more than 50 per cent of the population in the future will suffer from some effect of stunting.

There is, as in education, a variation in performance between provinces, with better innovation and coordination of effort and utilisation of resources in some, which could act as potential role models for others. The introduction of Provincial Health Authorities has enabled better coordination between provincial hospitals and rural health services, but coordination of responsibilities with the new District Development Authorities will be critical if they are not to impose a further stumbling block or overlap of duties.

 

 

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