Papua New Guinea's recently launched Medium Term Development Plan IV (MTDP 4) has been described as ambitious by the World Bank, stating that a developing economy like PNG needs a clear plan to address issues and grow the economy.
MTDP 4 stands as the roadmap for the Marape-Rosso Government in pursuit of its ambitious development agenda to incorporate the government's aspirations. Its aim is to grow the economy to K200 billion by doubling both the internal and external revenues and creating an additional one million jobs by 2030.
In a press conference during the launch of the World Bank's Country Economic Memorandum on the 11th of July 2023, The World Bank's country director for PNG and the Pacific Islands Steven Ndegwar said: “A World Bank PNG Country economic memorandum is currently being developed in close consultation with the Marape-Rosso Government's MTDP to support the National Government's objectives.”
According to the World Bank's latest report on the economy, Papua New Guinea can achieve sustainable economic growth if it can convert revenues from resource and mining projects into investments in the health, skills, and education of its population, and into improved infrastructures.
The Country Economic Memorandum for Papua New Guinea outlines that for PNG to better channel its natural resources into sustained economic growth, improvements to the business environment such as easing business entry and allowing greater competition could boost investment, drive positive economic impacts from extractives projects, and critically, share benefits more widely with Papua New Guineans.
When addressing the MTDP 4 Mr Ndegwar said: "It is a plan of what PNG needs, it provides an ambition to what this country can be and what the country does is provide a number of recommendations of how you can get there.”
"PNG also has the means to arrive at those outcomes so we have a problem, we have the opportunity, but we also have the means. And one of the means is that this country economic memorandum that provides the analysis helps you understand what some of the things are that can be done to achieve the goals of the MTDP," Mr Ndegwar said.
In relation, World Bank's Senior country economist for PNG Ruslan Piontkivsky highlighted that the agriculture sector as prioritised under MTDP 4 can be a launching pad for economic growth and job creation.
"Agriculture is a main employer overall, most people are employed in agriculture, what usually happens in other countries is recycled Structural Transformation."
"This is when people move slowly from agriculture into other sectors and industries and are employed within these sectors and productivity in those sectors are higher and as a result the economy overall becomes more productive."
"From what we observed, the structural transformation the moving between sectors is not happening sufficiently fast and moving very slowly," Mr Piontkivsky said.
Agriculture commercialization and downstream processing of materials are key objectives under the MTDP4.
Khwima Nthara, World Bank country manager for PNG, said that he believes the objective of the national government can be achieved if the value chain in specific sectors is developed.
"In terms of jobs you create in specific sectors, for example livestock but across the whole value chain in terms of the services of agriculture such as processing, packaging transportation, it is a sector that has huge potential for creating jobs as outlined in the MTDP and we've seen it in many countries," he said.
"There are countries that have developed and have created a lot of jobs through the agriculture sector so there's still a lot of potential in PNG to grow and create more jobs through agriculture," Mr Nthara said.
Reference:
1) Press Conference, launch of Country Economic Memorandum World Bank, PNG 11/07/2023, Port Moresby. [Paul Oeka/PNG Business News]
