IMF OUTLOOK CONFIRM PNG GROWTH RATE IS 3.1% NOT 9.2% AS BOASTED BY O'LIAR

by MICHAEL.J PASSINGAN

Last month Prime Minister Peter O’Neill publicly stated that the nation’s annual GDP growth rate is 9.2 percent.

He said Papua New Guinea’s growth rate is the envy of many world economies – “9.2% is miles better  than the global average, which is about 3 percent or less”.

That was untrue when he said it, and the Prime Minister knew it to be untrue. The growth rate for the year, according to the 2016 Budget, was 4.2 percent. But in fact PNG’s GDP growth rate at the time Mr O’Neill lied to the people was less than 4.2 percent.

Confirmation of that comes with the release yesterday of the IMF’s World Economic Outlook. That authoritative document estimates PNG’s annual growth rate this year is 3.1%. This is very bad news for Papua New Guineans.

It puts PNG’s GDP growth amongst the lowest in the world. But the accompanying graph shows that the situation is even worse than that. Under the corrupt, reckless and wasteful PNC Regime of Peter O’Neill, national GDP growth has plummeted from 10.7 percent in 2011.

It will hit 1.4 percent in 2018, according to the IMF.

This is far lower than the annual population growth rate of 2.1 percent. This means that Papua New Guineans are plunging further and further into poverty and despair each day Mr O’Neill and his political cronies and business sector con men remain in power.

O’Neill’s corrupt and unnecessary borrowings and corrupt and wasteful spending have also put PNG’s annual GDP growth rate below that of other developing economics. The Prime Minister has forced the rate below that of the world in general. O’Neill’s legacy, and that of PNC and its coalition partners, is the destruction of the nation.

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