Comments

Thank you for this fascinating insight into the life of a mobile phone credit salesperson in Timor-Leste. You may be interested in the experiences of similar informal economy actors in nearby Papua New Guinea. The film 'Mobail Goroka' is about the informal economy related to mobile phones in a highlands town and it is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYuPxueHGoU Amanda

Good to see some research on this - resonates strongly with a short piece I wrote in 2015 on exactly this: https://www.dailypost.vu/news/working-together-to-make-work-better/article_cd676da4-43e6-5126-94e8-ff52742b5007.html

Very helpful and interesting.

I think culture is the main influence behind the less or no women representatives in the Parliament. It is in our cultural system that men are the leaders in everything, from the family to the political environment. With this thought, or I should say a norm in our society, it also has a strong influence on the voters choices which is manifested in the elections results. Of course women have the same opportunities, rights and freedom, but its the strong culture that acts as a blockage to what should be done. Therefore, the people should be educated on this as they are the power to put women representatives in the parliament.

Thanks Michael. I know the revised OLIPPAC was a stretch, but at least it highlights the need for more female candidates. And you're right, the Party Registry has failed, particularly with reimbursing 10% of female campaign finances. If the quota is introduced, the party registry will have more of a load.

Hi Maho, another great piece. The unfortunate thing with the revised OLIPPAC is, it also seeks to force smaller parties (with less than 5 MPs I think) to merge. The problem is, there are many parties with less than 5 MPs, including one man parties like Bryan Kramer and Garry Juffa. And they love their one-man parties. So even the coalition of MPs who are supporting the reversed seats like Gary Juffa may not support the revised OLIPPAC because it will work against them. To get the 20% female endorsement by parties, they will have to remove the merger provisions for smaller parties. In its current form, I don’t think it’s getting through parliament. Second, PNG political parties usually recruit and endorse candidates with great chances of winning, including the few female candidates that they endorse. So the question will be: if they don’t find 20% female candidates with a winning chance to endorse, and therefore endorse less than 20%, how will these parties be held to account? Will there be penalties for parties that fail to endorse at least 20% female candidates? Past experiences show parties were never held to account, eg. MPs not voting together with their party resolutions (which were not allowed under OLIPPAC before these provisions were ruled unconstitutional in 2010). We are just complicating simple things. The 22 reserved seats are already provided for in the constitution, all they need is to pass an enabling legislation and implement it. It’s a temporary special measure.

That's right both men and woman can be elected but with lack of honesty in delivery of services most needed by people, the country will remain the same.

What might also be just as interesting and useful for development practitioners is more nuanced ranking of the quality and quantity of Australia & New Zealand aid in locations where they are the predominant donor actors vis a vis, the Pacific. An assessment that could be undertaken by Pacific development stakeholders themselves perhaps.

Great piece Anna - positions which I share without a doubt. I wonder if you have any thoughts, however, on how outsiders can support the sharing of how local change happens, without taking away local leadership. International organizations and donors often argue, quite rightly, that there is a case for sharing knowledge and experience across localities but this too can become another way to impose international "experts" over local leaders in selecting, organizing and publishing cases. Any thoughts on how to be a useful outsider while also ensuring that exchange of knowledge and experience to further support local actors can still happen?

That was a very informative paper. Very helpful for students and educators to consider to take appropriate measures.

What is equality in representation

Thank you for your response to the recent blog series David, also Songo, Moses, Nik for your comments. Firstly, I would recommend to each of you, and particularly David, that you read the document on which the blog series is based, The Path to Kina Convertibility: a study of the foreign exchange market of Papua New Guinea (http://inapng.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/The-Path-to-Kina-Convertibility-Study-of-the-Foreign-Exchange-Market-of-Papua-New-Guinea-21-February-2021.pdf). There is a thorough explanation of each of the points made in the blog series, and more, here. Briefly, the estimates for the calculation of increases in agriculture income are in section 11.6 and are based on estimates for agricultural export supply elasticities from Nakatani 2017. These estimates are based on recent data and so incorporate the current state of agriculture in PNG, and do not ignore the post-Independence decline in agriculture, as David claims. They are also consistent with other studies. Just the depreciation alone, without any supply response, confers a significant increase in income for this group. The at least USD 250 million p.a. improvement in the trade balance, and commensurate increase in forex reserves, is also based on Nakatani’s analysis. For Songo’s point about the effect of depreciation on foreign held debt, see section 11.7. On your comments about a gold standard and a return to it see section 10.4. In terms of the effects on inflation, pass-through in PNG is about 40% (perhaps a bit less at the moment) and is complete after about one year (section 11.3). Under current monetary policy arrangements, a depreciation will not cause hyperinflation, so that possibility can be ruled out. For Moses’ point about foreign investment, current conditions discourage it with difficulty for businesses in remitting profits and dividends due to queues for forex and the expectation of a large depreciation. As for the complex set of “usual” arrangements around how exchange rates are set to which Nik alludes, it is difficult to evaluate such claims without any evidence so no further comment is warranted. It should be noted that BPNG has adjusted the exchange rate over the past 6 years, with slow depreciation to offset the inflation differential with PNG’s trading partners to keep the real exchange rate constant (section 12.3). See also point 12 on p. 79 on possible reasons for reluctance to allow adjustment in the nominal exchange rate. The key points to remember are there is a structural imbalance in the forex market and that forex rationing has led to large queues for forex and import compression. This market dysfunction has hurt growth in PNG, and continues to do so, through a reduction in investment which diminishes productive capacity, also reducing current and future exports. It also reduces the availability of imported goods. With any relative price change, there are winners and losers and redistribution between them. For a depreciation, there are a large group of losers, mainly from urban areas (to avoid repetition see Paul Flanagan’s response to David’s last blog on this same topic). On the other hand, there are also a countering large group of winners (also elaborated on in the same response). There is a meaningful political economy between these two groups. As for the claim about brushing over the impact of a depreciation, I again refer the reader to the report (see section 11.2 and others). It is important to note that a 20% depreciation is like an ongoing 20% subsidy for all producers in the tradables sectors (at no cost to the government), that is, those who produce exportable and importable goods (goods which compete with imports). This provides a significant ongoing stimulus to this group and will spur growth in the non-resource sector, which is currently low (see section 11.1). In term of alternatives to a depreciation, wage restraint so that PNG’s inflation rate falls below that of its trading partners is an option but a painful and difficult one and so is not feasible. Fiscal restraint will assist with the structural imbalance in the forex market but that alone is not sufficient. A big increase in the government take is a viable alternative (see recent paper by Davies and Schroder), however given LNG tax concessions that possibility is a number of years away. Finally, a new commodities supercycle, which would improve PNG’s terms of trade, would also help.