Comments

Thank you for the response Raphael. We appreciate your interest. Wholesale internet prices are regulated in Papua New Guinea by the telecommunication regulator NICTA (the National Information and Communications Technology Authority). In September 2020, NICTA was in the midst of a process of seeking inputs from members of the public and interested parties in relation to wholesale internet pricing. In the same month, September 2020, an announcement was made by the Asian Development Bank about an investment with Fiji’s Amalgamated Telecom Holdings (ATH) for the purpose of supporting a new 4G mobile telecommunications network in Papua New Guinea. (We provided a link to the ADB’s announcement in the third paragraph of the blog post.) Therefore, as the issue was not yet resolved at that time, ATH cannot have been sure about what would happen with wholesale internet price regulation. By the way, Raphael, we also wanted to mention to you another key player. PNG DataCo sets prices and sells wholesale data to internet service providers and mobile network operators in PNG. Amanda and Moses

Excellent points. Disaggregation of livestock data is essential to support better decision making in relation to gender and also in relation to production systems. Crucial issues such as GHGe and nutrient profiles of products vary significantly across production systems, however, there is insufficient publicly available data on which to base sound decision making.

Thank you for this analysis. It underscores a good lesson in general for PNG on how competition and private sector input can influence pricing trends - not to mention reliability and accessibility for the general population. Some of us remember the service levels when there was one state owned enterprise providing the service. Hopefully this learning will extend to electricity generation one day. Great to hear that Starlink have been granted a licence to operate in PNG. This might provide further downward pressure on internet prices and be a service to households and much needed boost to business conditions.

GBADs has recently estimated that globally there is US$1.6 trillion invested in livestock and they produce annually an output of US$1.7 trillion (<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211912423000524" rel="nofollow ugc">https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211912423000524</a>). Livestock are the biggest rural investment after land itself and often the main capital asset for millions of people in rural areas. Yet we have no international dataset to help us disaggregate this huge investment by gender and this hampers what we say with regards achieving the gender SDGs.

Thanks Jonathan. Yes, livestock ownership is definitely a gendered issue. It impacts women directly by preventing them for having control over particular types of livestock, and also indirectly in that animal health and production services often prioritise livestock owned by men to the detriment of the small livestock species more likely to be under the control of women.

Impressive

Great blog Robyn, I would add that ownership of livestock is also an issue for women in many places.

Did the cables substantially reduce wholesale internet prices? That would explain Vodafone's decision to enter the market, seeing the gap between wholesale and retail prices, and anticipating that significant profits were possible even with lower retail prices. Thank you for this article, a welcome analysis for a trend that we've been witnessing over the last few years in PNG.

This is a long overdue issue. Thank you China for putting pressure on Australia.

Devpolicy Blog will soon share an update including practical information for applicants. The Australian Government is still advising that the PEV is scheduled to be launched in 2024, with the exact date yet to be announced.

I literally cried reading this article. I have gone through similar experience. However, what he has gone through is far worse than mine. This is really inspiring anyway.

New Porgera Ltd (NPL) recently issued a statement “seeking to clarify certain matters relating to the reopening of the Porgera gold mine that have been the subject of considerable speculation and misinformation ... over the past week”. The NPL statement may be read as referring both to the Banks/Burton blog post and other social media posts. Under the 2023 Consent Compensation Agreements NPL is currently negotiating long term compensation agreements with the agents for tenement landowners. The NPL statement includes the comment that NPL “would like to see the benefits being distributed directly to the household level, and not through middlemen, to ensure that the benefits actually reach the people for whom they are intended.” Payment directly to tenement landowner households is long standng practice at Ok Tedi. NPL may move towards a community engagement structure similar to that of Ok Tedi with its Community Mine Continuation Agreement. The Ok Tedi mining company, owned by the state, actively manages this agreement. Payment of benefits directly to households was suggested as the better policy for the PNG LNG project. This was strongly opposed by the Australian based anthropological consultants. Perhaps because it simply bypassed the consultants somewhat mystical concept of customary land ownership. Vailala Post Courier (14 March 2024) https://www.postcourier.com.pg/porgera-restart-benefits-to-be-shared-fairly-transparently/