PNGBLOGS

by MICHAEL J PASSINGAN Bank South Pacific is increasingly propping up the corrupt and financially compromised O’Neill Regime, exposing itself to higher and higher risk and putting itself outside its prudential guidelines. Prime Minister Peter O’Neill, who as head of PNG Banking Corporation drove the bank into bankruptcy, forcing its merger with BSP, has been pressuring BSP to lend more and more money to his Government and his failing SOEs. Since Mr O’Neill took Government midway through 2011, BSP’s lending to the Government and Public Authorities has exploded. At the same time corruption, waste and mismanagement within Government – especially in SOEs under Minister Ben Micah – reached record levels. And it continues to increase. In 2010 BSP;’s accounts showed it had a negligible K116 million in loans to Government and Public Authorities, or 3% of its portfolio. As at 31 December 2014 (the latest full-year BSP accounts available) the bank had K1.12 billion in loans to Gov

By: Dionisia Tabureguci of ISLAND BUSINESS It wasn’t too long ago that a partnership between the World Bank and its sister organisation the International Finance Corporation (IFC) in the deregulation of the telecommunications sector in some countries in the region was frowned upon. Critics called it a ‘conflict of interest’. Through multi-million dollar loans, the IFC—the World Bank’s private sector financing arm—was funding the Pacific expansion of Irish-owned Digicel. At the same time, the World Bank was offering policy and technical assistance to governments in the region interested in opening up their telecommunications market. Words like “double standard” and “inappropriate” were used to describe their involvement in the Pacific’s telecommunication market. The World Bank’s Country Director for Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste and the Pacific at the time, Nigel Roberts, had to defend the organisations’ involvements as independent of each other. “The process we’re involved in on the Wo

By: Dionisia Tabureguci of ISLAND BUSINESS It wasn’t too long ago that a partnership between the World Bank and its sister organisation the International Finance Corporation (IFC) in the deregulation of the telecommunications sector in some countries in the region was frowned upon. Critics called it a ‘conflict of interest’. Through multi-million dollar loans, the IFC—the World Bank’s private sector financing arm—was funding the Pacific expansion of Irish-owned Digicel. At the same time, the World Bank was offering policy and technical assistance to governments in the region interested in opening up their telecommunications market. Words like “double standard” and “inappropriate” were used to describe their involvement in the Pacific’s telecommunication market. The World Bank’s Country Director for Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste and the Pacific at the time, Nigel Roberts, had to defend the organisations’ involvements as independent of each other. “The process we’re involved in on the