Comments

Thank you Michael for the support and Canberra DevPolicyBlog for published this article. Hope this information will be valuable to others. Than you Elisa

Very interesting, thanks. A couple of questions. Were you able to quantify (or even estimate) the amounts invested in the different enterprise areas? Also under transport, I assume this is mainly buying a minivan and running a minibus service. Do you know how much income is generated from these activities or is it just a way to cover vehicle maintenance and running costs? Anecdotally my understanding is very much the second, although this may just be PV.

As with HECS in Australia, if the HELP program operates in PNG it will be yet another form of inter-generational wealth transfer. A far more important reform for tertiary education in PNG would be the political recognition that for primary and secondary education to reach any worthwhile standard, teachers need to be university educated according to international criteria. Ignore World Bank ideologues and local leaders who have since the 1980s consistently downplayed the relative and absolute importance of tertiary education.

While acknowledging the great and enormous aid assistance it gives to PNG, in my humble view, how Australia defines effective may not necessary mean the same as is in the eyes of the citizens, as I am grappling with the hard reality of PNG continuing to depend on aid from outside, year in year out, towards its "development" and continue to be troubled by the question of, when can PNG really break free from its dependence on Aid? Isnt aid supposed to make PNG independent and self-reliant? Isnt aid suppose to be a bridging assistance within a specific time period to assist the country and its citizens gain knowledge, skills and expertise or provide an initial funding support towards a specific area of need, on which to build on to eventually take charge and responsibility, to be self reliant and develop into the future? It does not seem aid assistance to our development has been progressive, rather we have become dependent on aid to view and understand the assistance practice as standard development culture and norm? I think there is a need to better define what is meant by effective aid support by trying to understand it from the perspective of the PNG citizens rather than from an Australian perspective?!

After 45 years of political independence, PNG must seriously reform its electoral system. This report and many other similar reports have clearly identified alarming flaws in the PNG voting system. It must now be a serious cause for concern among all Papua New Guineans because voting genuine and honest political leaders in the next election going forward, through a safe and robust electoral process will ensure the right caliber of leaders are voted into Parliament. Over the last 45 years, little has been achieved through socioeconomic and political independence while in the development space, the country has been lagging behind in all sectors. PNG cannot continue to regress while other small developing economies progress forward with good political leadership.

Bula Sadhana Thanks for your kind comments and good to hear from you. But it's sad that Fiji's situation so differs from the positive things we are seeing elsewhere in the region. Stay safe and well!

Bula Steve. Thanks for more food for thought in the so called "Pacific Paradox'. The Pacific Community (SPC) is investing deeply in its own capacity for monitoring, evaluation and learning to play a key role in strengthening MEL across the region: in the Pacific, for the Pacific, by the Pacific. Last year, we sought to better understand how, for whom and in what contexts our scientific and technical capacity development efforts are achieving outcomes in member countries. The report and an interactive map can be found in the links below. We all need to invest not only in capacity building and strengthening, but also in contextually and culturally responsive systems and processes, good quality accessible reports /tools that are useful and used in the development policy and practice cycles. https://www.spc.int/updates/blog/2020/05/robust-evaluation-shows-value-of-spc-capacity-building-in-the-pacific https://capacitybuilding.spc.int/

Excellent blog, Steve, thank you. You identify many factors that I have also found in my work in Indonesian education over many years. Two of these, the political and cultural, are beginning to be addressed in more thoughtful ways. Yet, when I observe the work of donors, I continue to wonder whether there is more interest in just remaining on the development merry-go-round rather than achieving truly sustainable benefits for our development partners.

In contrast to ADB’s self assessments, DFAT is reporting that 85+% of its investments in the Pacific are effective.

Thank you Mr Sakai for this interesting blog post. Thank you for explaining that the repayment timing and requirements have not been made public. It is worrying that students are applying for loans without being given a clear picture regarding when or how they will be required to re-pay the loans. Thank you again, Dr Amanda H A Watson

Interesting article, thank you, Stephen, and quite alarming. It did make me wonder how much of the second spike (2019) was related to PNG's hosting of APEC 2018, for which I believe PNG did receive some external funding assistance.

Thankyou for the thorough analyis on the Vanuatu's honorary citizen programs. As a local Economist i totally concur with all developments in this analysis since the inception of these programs until recent most importantly its contribution to the fiscal surpluses of the Vanuatu government.