Papua New Guinea: The informal economy and the resource boom
John D. Conroy Towards the end of 2010, the PNG government approved a National Informal Economy Policy. The rationale for this policy was presented in a recent Pacific Economic Bulletin . It was adopted amid concern that the benefits of increasing economic activity in the resource-extraction sector — the ‘commanding heights’ of the PNG economy — will not flow efficiently or equitably to the grassroots population. A better functioning, informal economy is seen as necessary to increase the efficiency of linkages between mineral enclaves and the broader population. Among PNG’s neighbour states in Southeast Asia the informal economy is taken for granted. It is even regarded (rightly or wrongly) as an embarrassing indicator of backwardness, whose progressive elimination should be a policy objective. So it might seem odd that in PNG the ‘informal sector’ should now be subject to official encouragement. Monetised informal economic activity is thought to need facilitation and suppo