Comments

This is a nicely written article on food prices. However, I would say, we have to increase production by providing higher price for their production. This way the farmers will have incentive to work and who know the one with the golf coast will turn their field in to farm. This way, when we have maximum production, like David said, the free market (invisible hands) will help the food price come down and become affordabe to poor people too. what you say?

Nik, You're quite right about Africa. But the aid budget doesn't provide data on individual African countries. On the Pacific, excluding PNG, there's no increase in aid to the Pacific this budget. Aid in 2010-11 is estimated at $662 million and that will go up only marginally in 2011-12 to $679. This is still an increase from the $419 million allocated in 2005-06, but not an increase of the size we've seen say in Africa, Afghanistan or even, closer to home, in Indonesia. Looking at individual Pacific countries, Vanuatu has certainly been a winner, and justifiably so. It got only $28 million in Australian aid in 2005-06; it got $59 million in 2010-11; and it is budgeted to get $70 million this coming year.

Excellent – concise and to the point. Although Africa is not a country so it would be nice to know how much each region gets and place Africa on that chart. Personally, I would be more interested in how our nearest neighbours the Pacific fared. Also maybe one day somebody can explain what Governance actually entials - as it is certainly not a sector in the traditional sense. There will always be lingering concerns that this is the real “black hole” of the aid program.

Susan, This is an interesting report on why aid to Pakistan is important. As you note in the first sentence 'the World's gaze is on Pakistan' and some, especially in the US, have begun to question whether the West should be providing so much aid. Nancy Birdsall wrote an excellent post on Tuesday, <a href="http://blogs.cgdev.org/mca-monitor/2011/05/friend-or-foe-should-the-united-states-cut-aid-to-pakistan.php" rel="nofollow">Friend or Foe: Should the United States cut aid to Pakistan,</a> which concluded: <blockquote>It took ten years of focused effort, persisting through repeated setbacks, to finally track down Osama bin Laden. That effort, as President Obama put it yesterday, has made the world safer and, “a better place.” A similar long-term commitment is exactly what is needed to put Pakistan on a healthier development path—and to make the world a better, safer place. No, now is not the time to abandon ship by cutting off the development program in Pakistan. Now is the time to right the ship. </blockquote> Thanks again for your timely report.

From my perspective scholarships should be considered primarily as aid. No doubt there are ample diplomatic benefits. Just look at how the Colombo Plan led to good, long-standing relationships between Australia and the countries that the Colombo Plan students came from. Or, more recently, look at how the training of Vietnamese and Cambodian scholarship holders has led to very good relationships between now-senior members of government and research institutions in those countries with the Australian government and research institutions. No doubt too there are cases where scholarships are handed out by Australian officials and developing country officials not on the basis of merit. These instances are to be deplored. But scholarships should be principally about aid that is intended to lead to better living standards in those countries receiving the scholarships. However, I would like to suggest that we should think of the provision of scholarships somewhat differently than the way in which normal evaluation processes are undertaken. I think of scholarships as similar to the funding of research. Many research projects are funded but only a few are successful. However, the payoff to the few successful ones are usually so large that their benefits far outweigh the cost of all others. Take the field of economics. If we can train one indiviual in economics who can be instrumental in having needed economic reforms implemented, the result can be increases in the economic growth rate of the country that last indefinitely. A one percent permanent increase in the growth rate of a Vietnam would more than cover all of Australia's foreign aid. I know of cases where such benefits have flowed from the high-level training of scholarship holders. This view of the scholarship program implies that if we are to carry out a realistic appraisal of the program, a much more individualistic assessment of the benefits has to be undertaken. Of course, this would be very difficult. But the counting of how many students return home from training, or other such measurements, is really not providing any kind of accurate account and leads us to worry about the wrong kinds of issues.

"I paid a bride" or "I paid a bribe"? Both worthy of investigation, but only one has a website right now.

Well there's the Demographic & Health Survey DHS 2006, which only was released last year, valuable material and shows continued very high child and maternal mortality rates, but perhaps need to be cautious about trends from 1996 (which would suggest a major increased rate), I'm told 1986 data may be more reliable which shows a steadier, but still unsatisfactory rate. The HIES is meant to be released any day, but we've heard that for a while and when a user meeting was to be held a few months back it was cancelled at the last minute. Rural sampling was also done and we're expecting to be able to use that for a financial competency survey and are told it's sufficiently robust. The 2010, whoops 2011 Census....will need to update ourselves on progress, but I'm told its not been helped with some injuries, including on the part of member(s) of the Aust support team,....so again perhaps we shouldn't hold our breath and anyway output won't be till well after the 2012 Election... [Download the national report from the 2006 DHS <a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6190378/2006%20DHS%20National%20Report.pdf" rel="nofollow">here</a> (140MB)]

Thanks Paul, Statistical surveys are an important tool for assessing whether the benefits of the commodity boom are reaching the broader population. In particular Household Income and Expenditure Surveys (HIES) can be used to track what is happening to household expenditures and levels of poverty. The last PNG Household Income and Expenditure Survey was done in 1996. According to the <a href="http://www.nso.gov.pg/71-household-income-n-expenditure-census-2009-2010" rel="nofollow">NSO website</a>, a new 2009-10 HIES will only cover PNG's five urban centres (Port Moresby, Lae, Goroka, Madang and Rabaul/Kokopo), which would tell us nothing about what is happening in rural areas. I've heard rumours that some rural sampling was done, but haven't been able to verify this or ascertain whether it is sufficient to do detailed sub-national analysis of household expenditure. In particular whether it would be sufficient to do the kind of detailed <a href="http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTPOVERTY/EXTPA/0,,contentMDK:20219777~menuPK:462078~pagePK:148956~piPK:216618~theSitePK:430367,00.html" rel="nofollow">poverty mapping</a> that the World Bank is supporting in Fiji. Such poverty mapping is a tool that would be invaluable for better understanding regional disparities in PNG. According to the NSO's survey budget estimate, the whole survey activities will cost the Government around K6 million. Do you know where the survey has got to or can others shed some more light on this? What other statistical evidence is available on development indicators in rural areas?

David, thank you for sharing your views on guaranteed work schemes. A good example of this kind of workfare program is the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act scheme in India which provides up to 100 days of guaranteed work per year, mainly on public works projects, at minimum wage for anyone below the poverty line. You can find out more about NREGA on their <a href="http://nrega.nic.in/netnrega/home.aspx" rel="nofollow">website</a>. For a deeper analysis, you can also look at some of the evaluations: for example, <a href="http://planningcommission.nic.in/reports/genrep/rep_NREGA.pdf" rel="nofollow">this on</a>e by the Indian National Planning Commission.

Trouble is guaranteed jobs does not mean they will spend their money on food for their children and guaranteed jobs means there is no incentive to work or have the right attitude etc. If people can not loose their jobs which are guaranteed work out put would more than likely drop so production of food and other commodities could drop creating foood shortages The free market has produced a surplus of food. What is needed is a free market solution to distribution.

Tim, The immediate constraints on agriculture are lack of reliable (or even any) road or transport access, low producer prices for many years (until recently) and various high costs, law and order problems (with crop theft etc), all combining to discourage farmer's interests. It's not all about largeholder production; smallholders have demonstrated that they can greatly increase production when they have the incentive, and of course tree crop exports formerly largely produced on estates have largely been replaced by smallholders for most crops. However, with good estate-smallholder support on an agro-nucleus basis, smallholders can circumvent some of the constraints of poor infrastructural and services provided by government. Some landowners working with agricultural companies have demonstrated that current land laws don't need to be a constraint to genuine agricultural development, and the recent amendments (which have not yet been gazetted) empower landowners further to utilise portions of their land more commercially if they so choose. These SABLs, however, undermine genuine agricultural development and dis-empower the landowners. The genuine agricultural development entails thorough work by landowners and companies in identify the owners and securing free and fair consent with respect to agreed portions of their land; these SABLs commit whole community, even wards and sub-districts' land, including villages, food gardens and tree corps (as well of course as sought-after forest land). It's a recipe for community dissent; some have already complained that they wouldn't want to grab their neighbours' land (as in some approved SABLs) as it would great lasting antipathy. So this is a scheme which attracts short term extractive activities, not genuine agricultural investment or sound land management, whether by smallholders and/o with large investment partners with a longer term horizon. The genuine major agricultural investors (as well as landowners) are very concerned about this SABL free for all.

Another method of providing education and enhancing skills for people from developing countries is through in-country education/training/support. As an adjunct to out-of-country scholarships, in-country approaches can offer culturally appropriate, accessible, affordable, relevant and grounded education & training. Our recent experiences of providing in-country training & support in the Pacific, in the field of operational research in health, have confirmed to me the value of this approach. We have found people are keen to learn, keen to develop as researchers, and eager to change local health systems as a result of their research. The local people involved would be very unlikely to ever be able to access the current scholarships or education abroad. Increasing scholarships, investment and aid that supports an in-country approach needs to be further considered.