PNGBLOGS

by JANE M TAPIA   This is a call to all Papua New Guinea women looking to live in Australia. Yes, there is such an opportunity. It will be funded by Australian taxpayers and you will get the opportunity of a life time. Firstly though, you should consider coming to Australia on a tourist or student visa. After you enter Australia, it doesn’t matter what kind of story you can put together. Make it so convincing that your life will be in danger and you will be prosecuted in PNG. If you have medical reports, photographs of yourself and police statements, that will be much easier. Download reports and statistics of the rates of violence against women in PNG and add that to your application for protection. It adds weight to your claims. Even if you don’t have any experience, you can always try. It has worked and many PNG women are now living the life in Australia all because of false protection claims. The Australian government knows PNG has very high rates of domestic violence and wom

by MICHAEL JOSEPH PASSINGAN On 17 March PNG Blogs revealed that Peter O’Neill has secretly begged the World Bank for a loan of up to K1 billion. On 22 March we revealed that international agencies are about to downgrade Papua New Guinea’s credit rating once again – after already being downgraded late last year. Now some good news – the economy and national finances have been damaged so badly by O’Neill’s reckless borrowing and wasteful spending that his proposed $US1 billion sovereign bond issue is dead - D.E.A.D. This is good news because it means the nation’s indebtedness will not increase by $US1 billion in the immediate future. It means the long-suffering people will not have more debt to repay each year. IT MEANS THERE WON’T BE $US1 BILLION FOR O’NEILL TO STEAL AND WASTE The failure of the bond issue proves that international money markets won’t lend a toea to O’Neill’s corrupt regime unless it is at unaffordable penalty interest rates. Such unaffordable interest

by MICHAEL JOSEPH PASSINGAN The foreign banking system is bringing more bad news for Papua New Guineans suffering under the corruption, waste and reckless financial and economic management of the O’Neill Regime. The International Monetary Fund, an arm of the World Bank, is lending almost K1 billion so commercial banks – BSP plus the two main foreign-owned banks ANZ and Westpac – can prop up the bankrupt government of Peter O’Neill. The fact that the IMF is a lender of last resort to failed economies illustrates exactly how bad the nation’s economic and financial problems are. The fact that the O’Neill Regime and the Bank of Papua New Guinea are keeping this loan secret adds to the fears that is a very bad deal for Papua New Guinea. The K1 billion, to be managed by the central bank, will allow the commercial banks to continue to buy government investments such as Treasury Bills, Inscribed Stock and Central Bank Bills, and possibly lend more money to State-Owned Enterprises.

PM TURNBULL by PETER WARINE Australia’s nearest neighour and only colony, Papua New Guinea, is on the brink of economic collapse due to grand corruption and mismanagement of the O’Neill Government. The Public coffers have run dry early last year (2015) and PNG has there seems not much left to keep its head above the water.  PNGs economic outlook is bleak. International Rating Agencies have all downgraded PNG to negative gradings. The O’Neill Government conducted roadshows around the world to secure some more loans to ease the cash flow and foreign reserve shortages but to no avail. Even treasury bonds were used to attract investors but were seen as mere toilet papers.  The economic crises has escalated and literally, there is no money to pay the public servants salary –something that O’Neill wants covered all the time as a measure of control public dissent. Whilst trouble is brewing on the island of paradise, life is as usual downunder. Australia has never raised any form o

Race to recovery: poorer and younger people will be the losers from a sustained budget crisis. by PAUL FLANAGAN The past year has been a year of poor public policy and misfortune for Papua New Guinea. The country ended the year in crisis management with cash shortages and budget cuts more severe than those in Greece's austerity package. Businesses are suffering from a lack of foreign exchange to pay for imports and sales are falling. Newspaper stories are increasingly of government cash shortages – funding not being paid to meet urgent medical programs such as drug resistant TB, teacher entitlements being deferred, superannuation contributions not being deposited, little being done to deal with the most severe drought since 1997. The international ratings agencies of Moody's and Standard and Poor'

by SAM KOIM Is Political stability the main driver of investor confidence? I have been led, and I believe many are, to believe that political stability is needed to give investor confidence and growing the economy. This misconception of synonymising political stability to economic stability has it’s seldom appearances in public grandstanding and political discourses. This is what I've discovered in debunking this illusion. Political stability talks about the length of time a government is in power. In terms of investor confidence, it means the investors can count on the current (negotiating) government for durability and certainty of the current position. Yes, in countries and time periods with a high propensity of government collapse (political instability), growth is significantly lower than otherwise but is it really political instability that really caused decline in growth? Economists may articulate it more clearly than I, but I gather that economic s

by BRYAN KRAMER Deputy Secretary of Treasury Mr. Aloysius Hamou was formally charged by Fraud Squad yesterday (28/1/16) for allegedly approving and facilitating the unlawful procurement of K50 million to purchase two turbine generators. The funds were drawn from the Department of Treasury back in December 2013 at the direction of Secretary of Treasury, Dairi Vele acting on the instructions of Prime Minister Peter O'Neill. Hamou w as charged under Section 91(1)(b) of Criminal Code, (False Claims by Officials). The provision states that a person employed in the Public Service who makes a return or statement touching any such matter that is, to his knowledge, false in any material particular, is guilty of a misdemeanour. Penalty: Imprisonment for a term not exceeding three years. Current Secretary of Treasury Dairi Vele is also facing criminal charges in relation to the same matter after the District Court issued a warrant for his arrest in July 2015. To-date V

by CHARLES K MARKOP Politics is an art and if you master it well, you can maximise your gains. The front page coverage by Post Courier, released after 3 weeks of the actual event, tells many stories. Here, former Prime Minister and currently governor of Wester Highlands Province Hon Paias Wingti (PW) is openly commending that Prime Minister Peter O’Neill (PO) is doing well and he (PW) is optimistic about PNGs future under O’Neill’s leadership.  The unholy alliance between PW and PO has a rich history. PO, apart from being a Bill Skate and PNC man, was one of those persons including the Maladinas who lived off Wingti. In 2002, PW orchestrated PO’s first election victory when he (PW) mobilised his men to destroy Roy Yaki’s (MP for Ialibu Pangia at that time) ballot boxes in Nebilyer towards Southern Highlands border.  In the 2012 elections, it is open secret that Ben Micah, through his relative Ken Kaiya (Government Printer), organised extra ballot papers for PW, PO and Mic

by PAUL FLANAGAN PNG is a high-taxing and very high-spending country relative to its Asia Pacific peers . Most of any adjustment to the fiscal balance should therefore occur on the expenditure side. PNG is planning to do this with a drop in the expenditure to GDP ratio from the highest level ever, of 38.1% in 2013, to its lowest level ever, of 24.6% in 2020. PNG has never attempted such a fiscal consolidation – not even to recover from the fiscal crises of the 1990s. Putting this into an international perspective, PNG is seeking to adjust government expenditure by 13.5% of the economy. This is more than double the government expenditure reductions undertaken by  Greece  of 6.3% (from 51.4% of GDP in 2010 to 45.1% of GDP in 2015). Of course, PNG is not facing a Greek-style fiscal crisis (at the start of its crisis Greece had a broadly similar deficit of 11%, but a much higher public debt level of 170% of GDP), but it is planning a similar or more draconian response. PNG is seekin

Madang Sunrise ; Photo Credit Jan Messersmith by MARINA WAITA PMIZ promises spin-off business for landowners but would not allow locals to participate. When one talks of project development, three major parties are involved; the investors, the government and the landowners.  There would be consultation and understanding before any agreement is signed, finalized and launched before operations begin. But has this been the trend here in Papua New Guinea? For the case of Pacific Marine Industrial Zone (PMIZ) in Madang Province, the answer is a big NO. There has never been proper consultation between the National Government and investors with the landowners of the Vidar site where the PMIZ project is located. The landowner’s constant struggles to make the government understand that they do not want the project seem to be falling on deaf ears. As they continue to raise concerns for the environment, potential creation of social problems and lack of real benefit in regards to

by YAKAN LEPAKAILI   The action of the deputy and acting Speaker of Parliament in the last Parliament session was well calculated and his action is not surprising but demeans the parliamentary process and democracy to say the least. This is in the light of opposition moving the motion of no-confidence notice. Initially, when deputy opposition leader sponsored the MONC, acting Speaking called it defective. The approach acting Speaker taken to make the ruling was it proper and followed the tenets of the Parliamentary Standing Orders leaves lot to be desired. The acting Speaker then returned the defective MONC notice to the sponsor to rectify the anomaly and surely resubmitted. In the second time, acting Speaker, on a Thursday, received the amended MONC notice. Whilst the opposition camp was throwing heart and soul into moving the MONC, those in the opposing team had counter plans on foot to outpace opposition. Typically, with Westminster system of governance