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Showing posts with the label Paul Flanagan

PLES PIG IN THE PIGGY BANK, PM RAIDS CENTRAL BANK

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by  Andrew Arthur Amendments to the Central Banking Act facilitate Marape and Ling-Stuckey drawing down K6 BILLION from the Bank of PNG to fund the 2022 Budget deficit. Before the amendments, Section 55 of the Central Bank 2000 Act gave provision for the Central Bank to provide Temporary Advances (TAF) to Government for up to K100 million. Section 55(9) clearly states that this TAF should not be used to fund a Budget deficit of the National Government. The IAG recommended that the TAF limit and purpose be retained.  https://pngcentralbankactiag.org/report/... The advice of the IAG was just window dressing and was largely ignored and instead, Treasurer and his two advisers Misty Baloiloi & Paul Flanagan have made wholesale changes to Section 55. The amendments to the Central Bank Act allow for Temporary Advances to fund the shortfall of Government revenue paving the way to print money to fund the K6 billion budget deficit.  They have changed section 55 to increase the previous K100m

Ling-Stuckey and Flanagan make Marape look jumpy and weak

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by : Andrew Arthur Prime Minister James Marape had one of his worst performances in the last parliament session jumping from one place to the other over the Dominate Player Levy. One moment he pushed hard in NEC for the new tax on the advice of Ian Ling-Stuckey and Paul Flanagan and as is the case, he flips his decision when met with some resistance in Parliament. Everyone knows Marape has a real problem with being decisive- but his performance on the 2022 Budget has now left PNG with a k190 million hole by shelving the ‘Dominate Player Levy’ that his Treasury Ian Ling-Stuckey and highly paid failed Australian advisor Paul Flanagan had craftily written into the budget for additional taxes on banking and telecommunication. The budget preparation is a culmination of 12 months of planning and works for Politicians, Public Servants, and advisors that ended in a major failure and refusal by legislators in Parliament. An embarrassment to those who had worked hard to put together the 2022 Mon

Inept treasurer, incompetent Budget, why PNG will suffer.

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by MITCH RENAGI Budget week should be a triumph for any self-respecting Treasurer - it should cap all his efforts over the past 12 months and lay out a rosy future for the next 12. Unfortunately for Ian Ling-Stuckey and his team of highly-paid foreign advisers, this Budget week has been a disaster, lurching from one crisis to another. His disastrous performance has shredded the Marape Government’s economic reputation. He and his advisers should resign, and failing that Marape should sack them. Ling-Stuckey’s failures are inexcusable. First, he missed the Budget sitting day by 24 hours.  Then when he did get around to delivering the Budget a day late, he did not table the all important Volume 1, Economic and Development Policies. In effect, the Budget has not been tabled. Neither Vol 1 nor his Budget speech have been posted on the Treasury web site as of Monday morning, so the public does not have access to the information that will guide people’s lives and the nation for the next 12 mo

Minister demand immunity for his debt addicted advisors

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By: Lori Otto Treasurer, Ian Ling-Stuckey has been harassing Government bureaucrats in PNG Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) demanding diplomatic immunity from any prosecution within Papua New Guinea for any failed advises offered by his failed former Australian Treasury Official, Paul Flanagan. Paul Flanagan was personally employed by Treasurer Ian Ling-Stuckey to provide advises on reducing Papua New Guinea’s debt which the Marape Government claimed was excessive. A claim that activists took to demonized O’Neill for increasing the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) from 30% to 35% in 2017. Kessy Sawang wrote more details in her website. https://pngwoman.com/debt-addiction Flanagan’s role was to decrease existing Debt and work on reducing the Debt-to-GDP from 35% to lower that 30%. Flanagan did the exact opposite, he advises Marape Government to immediately amended the FRA and increase the Debt to GDP Ratio from the highly criticized 35% to 45%. According to

PNG’s Challenges and Opportunities – 100 Day Plan

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by PAUL FLANAGAN PNG’s new government is proposing a 100 day plan. What should this consider? A good plan begins by fully understanding the challenges and opportunities facing its people. This understanding is improved by seeing how one is going relative to neighbours (comparative public policy analysis). The list below from the ADB highlights that PNG still faces massive development challenges. It is saddening to see PNG’s poor rankings. PNG’s politicians have been failing their people. On opportunities, PNG leads the world in key areas such as its cultural richness (1st), the extent of its tropical forests (3rd for the entire island), and its extraordinary biodiversity (PNG is one of 17 megadiverse countries in the world). In terms of mineral and petroleum wealth, it actually does fairly poorly – even in LNG its ranks 47 th and petroleum 62 nd (details below). In going forward, PNG needs to change its self-image of “mountains of gold in seas of oil”. This myth (at least i

BASET O MONI PLEN BILONG PAPUA NIUGINI EM INO MO STRET

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by PAUL FLANAGAN 2017 baset bilong PNG i bin wanpela ki taim bilong gavman lo soim kredibiliti bilong em long we em i bin manesim ekonomi bipo long ileksons neks yia 2017. Em i fail long soim dispela kredibiliti bilong em. Ol faul gem wantaim ol namba na ol giaman ges i bagarapim turu stron bilong dispela baset (ol ditel eksampol bilong revenu na expendisa i stap tamblo). Dispela pilai wantaim ol namba i stap klostu tru long mak bilong frod – em mas bilong halivim gavaman lo sait bilong politiks o long hamamasim ol investa. Wanpela bikpela wina long dispela baset em ol ovasis petrolum seholdas husait i bai kisim kat long kampani teks ret long mak bilong 45% (long niupla fil) or mak bilong 50% (long lapun fil) i go daun long 30%. Dispela bai i hamamasim Oil Search na ol narapela husait bai i benifit long niupla posibol Papua LNG Projek – but ating ol i kisim lowa ret long kondenset pinis i stap. Teks rate blo petrolum sekta long PNG istap bilo weld stended pinis

PNG’S ‘WEAK’ INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC SITUATION

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by PAUL FLANAGAN Summary The recent IMF report indicates PNG’s international economic situation is much more frail than the picture presented by the O’Neill government. Indeed, the IMF calls the foreign reserves position ‘weak’. PNG has less than one third the recommended level in its international bank account. And this is despite the foreign exchange rationing that is hurting PNG business, investment and jobs. PNG’s published import coverage ratios are misleading and out of step with internationally accepted definitions. Specifically, PNG claims foreign reserves cover 13.0 months of imports while the independent umpire, the IMF, says the figure is only 3.2 months of imports. The suggested level for a country such as PNG is around 10 months of imports. PNG has less than one-third the prudent level. PNG says the import coverage ratio for non-mineral sector imports has increased by 28% over the last five years.  This appears to show a healthy improvement in PNG’s external

PNG STRONGLY DEFENDS WITHHOLDING OF IMF ARTICLE IV REPORT TO COVER FOR MISSING K6.3 BILLION KINA

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by PAUL FLANAGAN SUMMARY The IMF report indicates the O’Neill government has overstated the growth rate in the PNG economy by 12.7 percentage points during its term. Primarily by 5.9 percentage points in 2014 and a further 5.2 percentage points in 2015 (see graph below). The IMF indicates the PNG economy is K6.3 billion smaller in 2017 than claimed by the government (and K5.4 billion smaller in 2016). This means the debt to GDP ratio is 33.5% in both 2016 and 2017 according to the IMF – above the 30% limit set in the Fiscal Responsibility Act. The greatest concerns about economic management relate to BPNG’s control of the foreign exchange rate and reserves with more breaches of international norms than admitted. The Governor of the BPNG should explain serious discrepancies between his statements on 25 January (full page adds in the local press on 26 Janaury) and what the IMF report actually stated on 27 January (see below). While commending the government for its actions in

PNG IS IN A ECONOMIC RECESSION - LEADING ECONOMIST

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PNGBLOGS Papua New Guinea is in economic recession, according to leading Australian academic economist Paul Flanagan, who is an expert on PNG. This is revealed in his analysis (at his www.pngeconomics.org blog) of the latest official numbers from the Bank of Papua New Guinea and the National Statistics Office. The official numbers show Prime Minister Peter O’Neill, Treasurer Patrick Pruaitch and Finance Minister James Marape are telling lies when they say the economic is healthy and everything is under control. Mr Flanagan says the recession began in early 2014, and the official numbers show that it is  continuing. This means Papua New Guineans’ standard of living has been falling since 2014. In other words, O’Neill has wasted the riches flowing from PNG LNG and the three years of high GDP growth he experienced when he became Prime Minister. Papua New Guineans are poorer today than they were at the start of 2014 because of O’Neill’s waste, corruption and mismanagement.   Fla

BE AN AGENT FOR CHANGE AND CHANGE THIS BAD GOVERNMENT

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by YAKAN LEPAKAILI ACT NOW AND BE AN AGENT FOR CHANGE AND CHANGE THIS BAD GOVERNMENT FOR BETTER PNG - OR RECOVERY ROAD WILL BE LONG, HARD AND TOUGH. BE RESPONSIBLE LEADERS AND DON’T BE IRRESPONSIBLE.  Isaac Lupari (the Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister Peter O’Neil), Dairi Vele (Secretary to Treasury Department) and Loi Bakani (Governor of Central Bank of Papua New Guinea), the trio are highly educated and most learned people in this era. They are of venerating career and distinguished people revered for contributing immensely to the country’s developments. Given their expertise in the economy, since the down turn of PNG’s economy and its continued downward slide, people like Paul Flanagan of ANU projects the gloomy outlook of PNG’s economy with comprehensive comparative tables and all these analysis never been challenged. In bewilderment, what’s intriguing is, none of the above trios, in their rebuttals, had the guts to rebut line by line and graph by grap

PNG – Pathways from Potential Crisis

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by PAUL FLANAGAN Potential crisis – what does this mean? • 3 types of crisis observed in countries through time (talk will focus on first, and some comments on second) • Fiscal crisis (PNG – first and second 1990s crises) • Government runs out of money to pay its bills. • Potentially manifested by shortage of government cash, ‘out of the ordinary’ borrowings, printing money, much higher government security interest rates. • External crisis (PNG – first and second 1990s crises) • Running out of foreign currency to pay bills (either private or more particularly government) • Potentially manifested by various forms of exchange rate controls, tariffs and quotas, foreign currency borrowings. • Muddling down crisis (more African and South American examples) • Pattern of continuing poor decision making undermining sustainable growth. • Medium to long-term timeframe – a slow bubbling crisis that may extend over a decade. • Potentially manifested by pattern of poor eco