Fiji’s fiscal year begins in August, and the government brought down its 2020-21 budget in July. The most striking feature of that budget is that total expenditure in the coming year is budgeted to be virtually unchanged compared to the preceding two years. Adjusting for (mild) inflation...
Project funds under the authority of Members of Parliament have become an increasingly important part of the Papua New Guinea budget in the last decade. While these funds have the potential to make a difference in the lives of remote and rural communities, complaints about corruption and unfinished...
A total of 26 women stood as candidates at the 2019 Solomon Islands national general election and, for the first time since independence, two women won seats in the national parliament. While this could be perceived as a positive development, it is clear that women remain poorly represented in...
Every few days, as part of a WhatsApp group of friends I would receive a message like this from James Scambary: I love this sentence from the latest early warning report: “PNTL (East Timorese police) arrived swiftly at the location, pursued the perpetrators, tried unsuccessfully at shooting them.”...
This blog reports on 14 interviews with market vendors at the main town market in Madang Province...
Voter turnout is high in Papua New Guinea. In 2017, approximately 90 per cent of the estimated...
Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it ― George Santayana Pacific aid...
As I highlighted in my first blog on this subject back in February, Papua New Guinea introduced its...
Constituency Development Funds (CDFs) and incumbency trends Incumbent members of parliament (MP)...
In 2013, PNG’s resource boom ended. Government revenue in 2019 was no greater than it was in 2013...
