PNGBLOGS

by PAUL FLANAGAN The Bank of PNG, the legislatively independent central bank for the country, lost significant credibility in its recent justification for why PNG has joined the bottom 2 per cent of countries in refusing to release the standard IMF Article IV report on countries (see here ).  It remains the only country in the East Asia and Pacific not to release an IMF Article IV report undertaken in 2016. BPNG provided six “critical issues” for refusing to release the report.  However, on closer examination, there was only one critical issue (fake GDP numbers used by the PNG Treasury).  And that should be the responsibility for the PNG Treasurer to release a statement on why the PNG was suppressing an independent assessment  by the IMF of the PNG economy. What is the O’Neill government trying to hide on its management of the PNG economy? International investors will easily through see this statement. PNG’s economic standing and credibility has received a severe down

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