A firm hand needed on the tiller
AT a time of steady economic growth and the promise of even greater expansion spurred by multi-billion kina resource projects, it can become easy to overlook the essential nuts and bolts that keep the economy humming. With the promise of big money coming in, it can become easy to overspend, borrow heavily against future revenue or loosen fiscal and monetary policies too much. That is why we welcome Treasurer Don Polye’s pledge to maintain macroeconomic stability through sound fiscal and monetary policies. Political stability must go hand in hand with good macro- and micro-economic policies to attract and sustain economic growth. PNG’s own immediate past is a solid example of just how this can be done, along with a pinch of good luck to do with a period of good world prices for a good number of PNG’s export commodities. The seven years of solid economic growth between 2002 and 2008 can be attributed to the fact that the Somare government served an unprecedented five-year term and then m