The PNG Gov's history with price controls

Although a few of you may find certain (if not in its entirety) the notion of privatising state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in Papua New Guinea in particular, then I think this paper by Timothy Curton of Australia National University (ANU) called "Privatisation Policy in Papua New Guinea" will demonstrate why the Mekere Government was adamant on a privatision policy during his term (1999-2002). However, this process was stalled when Somare came into power immediately after.

Commercial Statutory Authorities (CSAs) such as Elcom (Now PNG POWER), Air Niugini and Harbours Board throughout the lifetimes have been subject to an over-regulated market mechanism by the State.

Have a look at p.6:

The cabinet’s decision (National Executive Council 163/1983, 1–5) defining
the government’s future relations with the CSAs also laid down that they
should only undertake new investments if they earned at least the rate of return to be laid down from time to time by the minister for Finance in the
annual budget, and that if a CSA wished to undertake a non-commercial
investment for ‘social/political reasons’, it should seek a subsidy through the budget to cover any losses incurred by the investment. The minimum rate of return was announced only once in a budget, and that budget was rejected (in 1985), but the minister for Finance had in 1984 advised each CSA that an ‘appropriate’ rate of return would be in the range of 16–22 per cent already permitted to the private sector on price-controlled items (Whitworth 1993, 25). These prescribed rates of return were rarely achieved by any of the
CSAs. The average return on investment (ROI) of all four CSAs between 1985
and 1989 varied between a low of 11.1 per cent in 1985 and a high of 13.1
per cent in 1986 (World Bank 1992, 178). Those were the good years: from
1994 onwards Elcom’s operating profits were usually less than its interest
payments (partly because price controls prevented tariff increases to cover
higher costs of imported fuel after the devaluation of the kina in 1994) and
its ROI fell below 5 per cent, while the PTC’s fell to 4 per cent in 1995,
and Air Niugini incurred only losses after 1994 (World Bank 1999, 148–149).

So only if CSA's made a return of between 16-22% percent (of which none of them even achieved together), then they would be able to make new investments!

Curtin continues on p.7:


The NEC decision had directed the CSAs to prepare annual rolling forward five-year capital investment programs for approval by cabinet, and this was complied with until they were corporatized in the late 1990s. The decision further stated that legislation would be drafted enabling the CSAs to vary their prices and charges to the level needed to achieve the required rates of return, but subject to the ‘price justification’ procedures laid down in the Prices Regulation Act. The force of the cabinet’s decisions on pricing and investments was considerably weakened by this failure to grasp the nettle of freeing the CSAs from the government’s pricecontrols. As the years went by, the CSAs found it more and more difficult to gain timely
approval for price increases from the secretary of the Finance or Treasury Department, in his role as price controller, and this largely explains the CSAs’ worsening profits performance noted above. But even in the good years their overall gross margin (i.e. total revenue less
operating costs as a ratio of total revenue) was less than 20 per cent, whereas the private sector would aim for 40 per cent; and this shortfall reflected operating inefficiencies, inadequate sales relative to their large capital investments, and over-staffing.

p.8 continues:


It is evident that the response of the government in 1983 to the growing
difficulties of the CSAs in the 1970s and early 1980s was not to contemplate
privatization, which was rarely mentioned as a possibility, except by
Trebilcock(1982, 115), but to accept Floyd’s restructuring proposals by
turning them into quasi-autonomous entities free to behave as if they were private sector firms, subject however to restrictions on price setting and
staff emoluments. The implicit contradiction between Floyd’s commercialization of the CSAs and their continued public ownership was either not noticed or justified on the grounds that given equal commercial efficiency public monopolies would somehow be
more benevolent than private monopolies.

Does this sound familiar (Curtin,p.8):

Both the CSAs’ autonomy and their ability to operate as if they were privately owned began to be eroded in the 1990s, for increasingly their boards and top management became the creatures
of the current minister, and if he was removed or transferred to a new ministry,
the new incumbent soon acted to replace both board and top management (Millett 1993, 27).

Thoughts?

How do you make sense of death?

FM100 Papua New Guinea Reaching You 100%

This morning Hon. Member for Wau/Bulolo, Sam Basil MP updated his facebook status with:

So you can guess what I did next. Tried seeing if FM100 online. And Alas!

They were!



You can listen to the station live, however today there was a network error. I really hope they can fix this slight issue but other than that, well done to the team at FM 100!

Here's a pic which Mr. Basil uploaded of the interview with Mr. Hau'Ofa OBE

Twitter plans to buy TweetDeck Inc.

Imagine - a world where you didn't need so many tabs open or to click from browser to browser finding where your Facebook page or Twitter page was?? TweetDeck is the solution!


This morning, while crossing my things to do checklist, I checked my Twitter account. Read a tweet by Mashable about how Twitter is in talks to buy TweedDeck by Chris Taylor.

I had no idea what TweedDeck was until I read further in the article that:

TweetDeck is one of the most popular third-party Twitter clients, available in desktop, iPad, iPhone and Android versions. It displays your Twitter news feed, @mentions and direct messages, along with your Facebook feeds — all on the same screen, all updating in real time. TweetDeck can also support updates from MySpace, LinkedIn and Foursquare (Taylor, 2011).

TweetDeck's wikipedia article states that:

TweetDeck is an Adobe AIR desktop application for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Buzz, Foursquare, and MySpace. Like other Twitter applications it interfaces with the Twitter API to allow users to send and receive tweets and view profiles. It is the most popular Twitter application with a 19% market share as of June 2009, following only the official Twitter.com website with 45.70% share for posting new status updates. It is compatible with several operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. An iPhone version was released on June 19, 2009 and an iPad version was released in May 2010 as well. An Android version was recently made available after a public beta period.
Users can split the program into columns which show different things, for instance tweets from friends. TweetDeck interfaces with Twitscoop, 12seconds and Stocktwits, all of which can appear in separate columns. It also allows users to split the people they follow into groups, a very useful feature to many users. The client supports URL shortening which can be done on-the-fly.

It took me less than a minute to download. If you've got Google Chrome, you can download the app from the Chrome shop for free here. Otherwise, TweetDeck is also available for iPhones, iPads, desktops and Android.

Rainy weather music: Summer in the city - The Boys and Girls Club

So it rained this morning and continued (for a while). I struggled to find a song to listen to today, but remembered 'Summer in the City' by the Boys and Girls Club.

I first came across this track, Summer in the City by the Boys and Girls Club in 2007 after reading a post by Analog Giant.

The link to download the mp3 did not work so I managed to download the mp3 from iTunes and eventually created a Youtube video for the song because there wasn't one.

Taylor K. Long from www.t-sides.com provides a review of the song that really sums it up:

“Summer in the City” is the right kind of electro pop for a lazy late summer. It’s got a solid beat that’s not quite fast enough for dancing, but great for waking up in the morning or walking down the street. The vocals are a soft and tongue-heavy purr, building a picture of the typical summer romance – afternoons spent at home in bed, the kind of commitment that needs no declaration of its loyalty beyond frequent time spent together.

It’s a gracious anthem for those of us wanting to make the most of these last hopeful summer nights.

Enjoy!
Spowf



If you love it so much, you can download the track for $1.69 on iTunes here!

World Music: Zimbabwean artist Oliver Mtukudzi

I just visited my friend, Tawanda's blog, Thoughts, Experiences and Insights.
A proud Zimbabwean, his post Soundtrack to my life cont.. really made my afternoon. I am calling today a spiritual mental health day.

This song by Zimbabwean artist Oliver Mtukudzi aided that effort.

Face of a dancer from the Alotau Canoe Festival

If you remember, I wrote a post about Michael Fletcher's beautiful footage taken for North Star Cruises. I somehow, ended up on Flemming Bo Jensen's blog. Flemming is a self-described photographer, traveller, dreamer and nomad.

I found a particular post on Papua New Guinea in particular. Her images taken at the Alotau Canoe Festival of a strikingly beautiful, local, male dancer (see image on left -
Source: www.flemingbojensen.com)

I'm seriously contemplating getting a well-known local Papua New Guinean painter, Jeffry Feeger to paint this.

John Pilger on Obama and Obama, the brand

"Real activism has little time for identity politics" - John Pilger

The Political economy of everything that's wrong in PNG by the Namorong Report

I recently signed up on Twitter about two weeks ago and searched 'Papua New Guinea' to start seeing which fellow New Guineans were on Twitter. I scrolled down the list and started following a few random names that had interesting (if any) filled bios.

I began following Mangimosbi and today only visited his twitter profile and read replies to a post he had published on his post called The Namorong Report.

He claims to a medical school drop-out but after reading his post "The Political Economy of Everything That's Wrong in PNG", I don't see why he can't be published.

Martyn Namorong, aka Mangimosbi writes about the education trap that is the Papua New Guinean education system.

Excerpts include:

The solution is not necessarily to 'teach a person how to catch fish' but to give them a net. I believe it's now fair to comment that microfinance institutions in Papua New Guinea have failed in providing people that net. Politicians, Churches, NGOs and business interests have been excellent distributors of free handouts instead of the 'net'. The net I'm referring to is the ability to trade goods and services and/or labour. Our rural people need efficient and affordable transport networks to move goods to local and global markets and to access services. Our urban people need jobs or financial assistance to start small businesses.

Quotable quotes include:

"I believe change is driven by innovation and innovative people are empowered people."

"I don't dream anymore, I am grounded in the reality. I grapple with the facts as they are. Perhaps there are too many visionaries and dreamers such that no one is there to deal with the reality of life in Papua New Guinea. Even a vast majority of people who a trapped like me do not wish to deal with reality. That is why fast money schemes continue to thrive and voters are gullible towards politicians."

Masalai blog, you should definitely contact this young bright man and include him in the next Forum you chair.

Revolution in the Arab World

For those of who have not subscribed to foreignpolicy.com I suggest you as being a subscriber has it perks. Foreign Policy is published by the Slate Group which is a division of the Washington Post. I just have downloaded an eBook for only US$4.95 for a special report done by Foreign Policy called "Revolution in the Arab World".

Edited by Marc Lynch, the co-editor of The Mideast Channel, FP editor in chief Susan Glasser, and managing editor Blake Hounshell, Revolution in the Arab World: Tunisia, Egypt, and the Unmaking of an Era, is an exclusive new ebook that offers an authoritative look at the rapid reordering of the world's most strategic region and the dilemmas it presents for American power.

With contributions from noted writers Issandr El Amrani and Ashraf Khalil to bestselling authors such as Robert Kaplan and leading U.S. policy experts like Aaron David Miller, the six chapter book includes the prescient rumblings of revolution noted by Amrani and other writers in FP over the last year, a dramatic re-telling of the drama in Cairo's Tahrir Square, deeply reported articles on the behind the scenes players who drove the revolutions, and insights on Washington's back-stage drama over how to respond.

Published in real-time and available to readers on their Kindle, iPad, and computers , Revolution in the Arab World uses new technology to tell the story of the uprising that continues to spread throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

Excerpt from Synopsis:

Where did this wave of anger come from? Why did it begin in Tunisia, and what does it mean? FP's special report starts with a revelatory first chapter that shows how the revolutionary rumblings were ignored, dating back to Issandr El Amrani's prescient warning to Barack Obama in January 2010: Egypt, he wrote, could be the ticking time bomb that overwhelms your international agenda. The coverage also includes a dramatic day-by-day retelling of the battle to hold Tahrir Square, insider accounts of Washington's flip-flopping and struggle to keep up with events, and some of the world’s leading authors and experts, from James Traub to Gary Sick to Robert D. Kaplan, on where we go from here.

Consider it a guidebook for these revolutionary times.

Click here to purchase Revolution in the Arab World.

Cultural resurgence - not rebellion

Pacific Pulse visited the Festival of Pacific Arts in 2008 and covered a story about the resurgence of traditional tattooing amongst Pacific Islanders - a tradition that had been discouraged by earlier missionary settlement in the last century. I personally had planned a trip to my grandmother's village in Yule Island over the Christmas holidays recently solely to get inked - to honour my grandmother, who is almost in her 90s. Taita, my grandmother traditionally was required to have her entire body (like many other girls on our island) to get her entire body tattooed as a sign of matury and womanhood when she reached puberty. As a young Papua New Guinean who left Papua New Guinea in my early teens, I have confronted issues of who I am, and my personal cultural identity. It is said that in order to know who you are, you need to know where you come from and it has given me a sense of immense pride knowing that I come from a rich cultural background. Thus, in order to celebrate the women before me and to gain the cultural strength to develop an individual identity in the 21st century, I must first know the history and traditions of my people. Click here to watch Pacific Pulse's Episode here.

Images by Jes Aznar - Papua New Guinea Confronts Development

Photographer, Jes Aznar of the New York Times has taken a few compelling and thought-provoking photos that address key development issues that Papua New Guinea will address, ones which depend upon whether the economic benefits of the PNG LNG project in turn address the social and development issues which stain the country's reputation. Click here to be transferred to the nytimes.com to view a slideshow of the images.

PNG LNG Riches May Not Help Papua New Guinea

Norimitsu Onishi's article in The New York Times Online, "Riches May Not Help Papua New Guinea (October 25, 2010), Although project-developer, ExxonMobil has stated that it "seeks to create long-term economic and social benefits from its projects and prescence" and "help local businesses to develop proper governance systems" - in reality, that long-term goal is a far-fetched one. Although some of the money has seeved down into the wallets of ordinary Papua New Guineans, some think that Papua New Guineans are not ready to for that kind of money. I agree. With sentiments brewing about how this project has the potential to largely boost Papua New Guinea's economy by up to 80% and create thousands of jobs that will benefit Papua New Guineans and the local economy, under the country's current political and social structure, it seems unreasonable to agree that these estimates will in turn create an opportunity for the government to address current oustanding corruption and transparency issues, increase and improve the service and delivery of basic services to the majority of its population. Yes, projects such as the LNG PNG gas project have the opportunity to transform the and improve PNG's economy, however, economical benefits need to be balanced with measures that aim to also address oustanding social and development issues. Papua New Guinea will only benefit in the long-term if ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND POLITICAL issues are addressed in order for the overall welfare of the country to improve.

Adventures in Paradise: Images of Papua New Guinea by Michael Fletcher

Hi everyone:)

I do apologise for the MIA situation.

I have since just come across some extremely stunning video imagery taken by Michael Fletcher who is the twin brother of premier Australian landscape photographer, Christian Fletcher. while searching "Papua New Guinea" on Twitter.

HauteOC Traveller tweeted about an interview conducted with Michael Fletcher. Michael is a videographer himself however, his twin brother, Christian is one of Australia's premier photographers (he recently won 4 awards at the Australian Professional Photography Awards 2010).

My goodness but WOW! I remember why I'm proud to be Papua New Guinean again:)

Images Of Papua New Guinea - Scene 1 from Michael Fletcher on Vimeo.

PNG bans legal challenges against resources projects

PNG bans legal challenges against resources projects
Posted Mon May 31, 2010 8:23pm AEST on ABC.net.au

Papua New Guinea's parliament has passed legislation effectively banning anyone from using the courts to stop resource projects.

Amendments to PNG's Environment Act mean approvals granted by the environment department's director cannot be challenged in court.

It means people worried about the environmental impact of a resource project can no longer mount a legal challenge to the approvals.

The changes follow complaints from the mining industry after landowners won a temporary injunction preventing a Chinese-owned nickel mine from dumping waste into the sea off Madang.

Environment minister Benny Allen says the extraordinary measures are in the national interest.

Lawyers say the amendments also mean people cannot seek compensation for environmental damage.

101 East: Chinese migrants face PNG wrath

Images: PNG Mourns Kokoda Trek crash victims

View a slideshow of more images from the Airlines PNG crash here.

No Survivors on Kokoda Track Airplane Crash

Time for change is NOW

Got an emailed attachment in my inbox this morning - a signed petition/statement from a number of members of parliament in relation to the pending vote of no confidence against Papua New Guinea's Prime Minister, Sir Michael Somare.

It's worth a read.

Download the report here (right click, save target as):

Papua New Guinea Opposition Media Campaign 2009

Perfectly Frank

"We are not going to have an election just to please Australia and New Zealand. That's not going to happen".
- Frank Bainimarama

He's been called a dictator, a disgrace and a blot on democracy in the Pacific, but Fiji's interim Prime Minister, Frank Bainimarama, says he just wants to make his country a better place.

In a rare interview with Mark Davis he comes out fighting against his critics...on SBS's Dateline (on Sunday, August 1, 2009).