Comments

Thanks very much for the great and the marvellous job which has been done by our great grand chief Sir Michael Somare for the people of the independent state of Papua New Guinea.

Dear Rohan, Thank you for your comments. The Ethiopia analysis was done using a computable general equilibrium model designed to capture effects of policies and shocks across all economic sectors, factor markets (labor, capital...), households, etc. Our multi-market model analysis did not include these general equilibrium effects and we do not have immediate plans for a CGE analysis, in large part due to data limitations. General equilibrium results for PNG would likely vary considerably from those for Ethiopia, though, because of the very large role of the oil, natural gas and large farm agricultural export sectors in PNG's foreign exchange earnings and the overall economy. Modeling the behavior of these sectors and the responses of the PNG government will be crucial to the simulation results.

A correction to the post of 19 March: Mr D. Brian King continues as the Barrick Australia arbitrator. Vailala

Hello Emily, Xinshen, Paul and Peixun. This is a fascinating and important piece of research, even if somewhat sobering in light of COVID19. As you probably know, PNG has been experiencing foreign exchange rationing for the last 6 years or so. I am wondering in a PNG situation whether the distributional effects of an exchange rate devaluation would be similar to that of one of your co-author's papers [https://www.ifpri.org/publication/economic-implications-foreign-exchange-rationing-ethiopia-0] in Ethiopia - which found that the removal of rationing and subsequent devaluation would lead to an increase in real incomes for the urban poor of around 4%. Can the data you collected in this research be used to model a similar simulation on the distributional effects of removing FX rationing/creating convertibility in FX markets on incomes and calorie intake? do you have any plans to do this?

As citizen of Somaliland I feel proud of what the government did over 30 years of its existence. It is much better than many African-recognised countries in terms of peace building, economic boom and good governance.

Well written and pragmatic article. Good job and best of luck with your work!

Thanks Stephen for your response, I do enjoy reading the articles and the analysis provided by all the contributors to the Blog. I am sorry for using the harsher work of "failure" but I was drawing this from when I read that the key initiatives of the Forum (the Pacific Plan and the Framework for Pacific Regionalism) had failed. If this is so, then the whole raison d'etre of the Forum and its Secretariat have failed as they are not able to provide their members with the environment to progress the Leaders' vision for the Forum. We should also acknowledge that the region's narrative changes and has to be updated while a 2050 focus might be longer than some might suggest it is a valuable process for the countries and partners. One other matter, if Forum membership is providing so little value for the members then the decision on who held the position of Secretary-General would mean virtually nothing, hence, the position of the Micronesian countries would then not make any sense. So I think this recent round for the SG showed that there is still a lot of interest in the leadership that is shaping the future of the Forum and its Secretariat.

Thanks Grant, this is the most valuable research. Just one suggestion, you need to indicate what type of corruption you are talking about. Corruption that extracts relatively small bribes from the citizens is very common everywhere where the state is weak, choatic and dysfunctional (except for collecting bribes). It is often however understood by the victims-citizens, who give this practice innocent sounding names, lunch-moni or tea money. For PNG however an equally or possibly more important form of corruption is the grand corruption where money is directly taken from the state or even from the central bank and directly transferred to other, private accounts. Similarly, the corruption with mining licenses and kick-backs on selling of state assets by a few well-connected individuals involves huge sums of money, as we recently read in the Guardian https://bit.ly/pngrexpaki. I will be writing you to see how we can put some of this research together and paint a complete picture. Corruptology is on the rise! 🙂

Congratulations to the authors of this interesting piece. Tracking and comparing regular price data on internet costs is an excellent approach. One question: Are you sure you will be able to attribute any eventual cost decreases (supposing they occur) to the Coral Sea Cable as opposed to any other factors?

19 March 2021 - The Porgera mine closure and the progress of the two ICSID proceedings initiated by Barrick. 1. Barrick Niugini Conciliation proceedings. On 22 July 2020 ICSID registered a request by Barrick Niugini (the claimant) for a conciliation hearing. Barrick nominated Mr Sundaresh Menon (Singapore’s Chief Justice) and on 18 December 2020 ICSID confirmed Mr Menon’s acceptance of appointment as Conciliator. At the request of Barrick and following the non-response of PNG the Chairman of the ICSID Administrative Council appointed Ms Anne-Karen Grill (Austrian) and advised her acceptance of appointment as Conciliator on 7 January 2021. This was followed on 19 January 2021 by a notification of his acceptance of appointment as presiding Conciliator by Mr Joseph Tirado (British/Spanish). On 15 March 2021 Barrick filed an initial written statement. On the same day the the Conciliation Commission (comprising the two conciliators and chairman) held a first session by video conference. The Conciliation Commission will continue to meet and consider the Barrick Niugini submissions. Should there be a continuing absence of a material response from PNG I am confident the tribunal members will use their best efforts to construe a PNG position and response to the Barrick submissions. 2. Barrick Australia Arbitration proceedings. The request for arbitration by Barrick Australia was registered by ICSID on 11 August 2020. On 28 December 2020 Barrick appointed D. Brian King (USA) as arbitrator. On 3 March 2021, following the apparent failure of the PNG government to appoint an arbitrator, and at the request of Barrick the Chairman of the ICSID Administrative Council advised that Philippe Sands (British/French/Mauritian) had accepted his appointment as arbitrator. Mr Sands is a widely-published author and is well-known as an international lawyer, as an advocate of human rights issues and for his involvement in international investment dispute arbitration. As at 18 March 2021 Mr D. Brian King is no longer listed as the claimant’s arbitrator. No doubt another appointment is pending. The Barrick legal representatives for the conciliation and arbitration proceedings are the New York firm of Debevoise & Plimpton. This firm acted for Barrick in the Barrick v Pakistan arbitration. No legal representatives have been listed for PNG. There is no public record of a PNG response to both proceedings. Many of the issues involved in the closure of the Porgera mine have been aired in the PNG Courts. Although some issues have not to date been heard it does seem likely that further litigation initiated by Barrick in the PNG Courts may soon become futile. The decisions of the PNG Courts will be useful for Barrick when arguing the facts pertinent under international law and the matters at issue for the Arbitration Commission. Vailala

Constituency Development Funds goes back to 1984. It took different names, the most recent being DSIP/PSIP. So CDFs were still used during NA’s 9 years. There was an increase under O’Neill, but the habit of using CDFs to punish or reward MPs preceded O’Neill. Ketan (2007) gives details on the abuse of CDFs, including under NA, to consolidate power. Looking forward to the next piece.

If I were to speculate, I would say that a more fragmented parliament would comprise more parties with more than 3MPs, but fewer with substantial size as to challenge the ruling party. The dash in the table is to indicate that the DPM is a member of the PM's party, and the percentage is not given as the table tries to give a sense of total size of the two dominant parties (PM and DPM) in the coalition, if they are able to form government on their own, or would they require other parties. But as Michael alludes to below, there may be other factors that contribute to political stability.