Poverty Assessment 2004

This report takes stock of the poverty situation in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and the consequent policy challenges amidst concerns of deteriorating economic and social conditions in the country.

A number of recent assessments have described the social and economic situation in PNG in stark terms as a country in the throes of a serious social and economic crisis.  Responding, in part, to similar concerns, PNG’s most significant donor Australia developed its Enhanced Cooperation Program to strengthen its engagement in the country. 

While concerns with the PNG situation are manifold, an overarching concern relates to the prospects for protecting the living standards of the population, especially the relatively poor population, in the short and medium term. In this setting, this poverty assessment report seeks to:

• provide an update on the state of poverty in country;
• review policy issues and challenges in the two key areas of restoration of economic growth and the delivery of basic services; and
• assess key gaps is the currently available information base for poverty monitoring and evaluation.

The key factor underlying the increase in poverty has been the contraction of the economy. GDP growth rate plummeted since the mid-1990s and still has not convincingly recovered.  For most of the last 10 years, the economy has been contracting, and together with a population growth of 2.7 percent per year, in per capita terms the last decade has been a period of massive growth failure.

For organizing the overall messages and policy implications emerging from this study, a simple framework of client-provider-policy maker inter-relationships can be utilized. According to this framework, the service delivery chain can be unbundled into the relationships between three sets of actors, namely the policymakers; the frontline providers of services; and the clients or citizens who are both the source of demand for services as well as their final destination as consumers. This framework, relationships amongst the three sets of actors are important for understanding delivery of basic services.

 Executive Summary (83kb pdf)
 Main Report (579kb pdf)
 Annexes (588kb pdf)