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