http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au//story/...,25727815-2703,00.html
Endlich mal ein Artikel mit der wahren Ursache der "Crisis"
The lesson was learned early, at Bougainville, that it could prove fatal to rely on the Port Moresby government to play its full part in meeting those expectations.Its failure to review the royalty structure, as the mining agreement stipulated, led directly to the civil war and closure of the massive mine.
Rowan Callick, Asia-Pacific editor | July 04, 2009
Article from: The Australian
CAN billions of dollars of gas refloat Papua New Guinea? The country's hopes since independence have focused on one huge mine or energy project after another, each getting progressively bigger.
Each has been hailed by the country's government as the answer to PNG's grim list of problems, which persist through boom and bust cycles alike.
Abel Simon, a researcher at the National Research Institute, says: "PNG is known as an island of gold floating in a sea of oil. However, the lifestyle of the people and their access to basic goods and services tell a different story."
In the past few years, thanks substantially to high commodity prices, there has been something of a boom, on paper at least. Economic growth reached 6.5 per cent in 2007 and 7 per cent last year, and despite the global downturn PNG is sustaining growth this year too. But living standards have kept sinking, regardless. PNG, with its rapidly growing population of 6.2 million, stands 149th of 177 countries in the UN human development index, well below its Pacific Island peers.
Loi Bakani, deputy governor of PNG's central bank, recently warned of the danger of reverting "from boom to gloom", with government revenues expected to fall 25 per cent this year.
PNG recently has been overtaken by Indonesia as the biggest recipient of Australian aid, but in the past financial year still received $390 million.
About 2 per cent of the adult population has HIV-AIDS, and an AusAID-commissioned report has warned that without substantial interventions, by 2025 500,000 people will be living with the disease, claiming 70 per cent of hospital beds.
Last week, contracts were initialled that mean the country's ultimate El Dorado is virtually certain to be a commercial goer: a $16 billion liquefied natural gas project, with the gas to be piped down from the Highlands to a liquefaction plant near Port Moresby and shipped to customers in China, Japan and Taiwan. This will inject huge amounts in to the economy, especially during the four years of construction likely to start early next year, when Exxon Mobil, the leader of the gas consortium, will be spending almost $5 billion a year, more than the entire national budget, employing more than 6000 workers. Up to 60,000 landowners are set to benefit directly: those living around the gas fields, those 5km on either side of the pipeline and those near the liquefaction plant.
A long-time resident of Port Moresby says: "There is a new sense of confidence everywhere."
But will it, as other such projects did before, just ratchet up the corruption and distort the economy so severely that many of PNG's other businesses can't survive? History does not offer reasons for optimism. Simon warns that "PNG could become another Nauru", once the wealthiest - if also the tiniest - country in the world per head, thanks to its phosphate mine, and now a basket case. But the sheer scale of the LNG deal provides plenty of cash to trickle down. And the economy is in better shape than it has been for some time, thanks in part to the political stability resulting from constitutional measures introduced by the previous prime minister, Mekere Morauta.
Veteran leader Michael Somare, known to all as "the chief", has become the principal beneficiary, enjoying his longest spell in power since first becoming prime minister 34 years ago. Under Somare, macro-economic management has been sound, public sector debt being slashed in seven years from 72 per cent of gross domestic product to 31 per cent today. His son Arthur, the Public Enterprise Minister, is playing a prominent role in managing the gas deal.
But Satish Chand, professor of the business school at the University of NSW, based at the Australian Defence Force Academy, warns: "Attempts are being made to spend this income before it even eventuates. Fortunately, the current financial crisis will reduce the capacity of governments to borrow against future revenues. One hopes that PNG politicians would have learned from their profligacy of the mid-1990s, but you would not want to bet on it."
The big ventures on which PNG first hung its dreams were Bougainville, which had been Australia's gift to the nation as an income-earner, and Ok Tedi, both massive copper mines. The latter was lauded by then prime minister Julius Chan as "the pot of gold" at the end of PNG's rainbow.
They were followed by the Porgera mine, which at its peak produced more than one million ounces of gold a year, then the launch of PNG as a medium-sized oil producer, and the Lihir mine, now expanding to about 800,000 ounces a year, rivalling Australia's biggest goldmine. Each of these projects defied the odds to get developed, being constructed in extraordinarily remote and mostly difficult terrain, requiring remarkable feats of engineering.
They have mostly also succeeded in navigating anthropological mazes to establish ownership rights and organise compensation and royalty payments, in the face of sky-high expectations on the part of local populations who had mostly been neglected by governments and had become well aware that this would be their one shot at shifting out of rural poverty. Inevitably, such a weight of expectation at times has created a burden too heavy for any project to bear.
The lesson was learned early, at Bougainville, that it could prove fatal to rely on the Port Moresby government to play its full part in meeting those expectations. Its failure to review the royalty structure, as the mining agreement stipulated, led directly to the civil war and closure of the massive mine.
Since then, private operators have ensured that they do whatever it takes to keep the local population in the project area as content as possible. The big failure has been to connect the revenues flowing to the government - which is also granted part-ownership of every resource deal - with the broader economy.
Former prime minister Paias Wingti called the Porgera mine his "engine for growth". But nothing much grew beyond the Porgera area. Instead, these super-projects have tended, especially during their construction phase, to inflate costs, boost the kina and diminish the opportunities for more sustainable businesses to emerge.
At the same time, the revenues from the resource sector flow through a narrow pipe - compared with, say, tourism, farming or fishing - and are thus easily diverted to the pockets of the political elite.
Last year's exports from PNG to Australia highlight the consequent narrowness of the economy: gold comprised $1.6bn and oil $1.2bn of the $2.9bn total, with coffee the next biggest category, at just $31m.
Paul Barker, director of PNG's independent think tank, the Institute of National Affairs, says: "The LNG project has many attractions. It's large and long term, has limited direct negative environmental impact (and) will provide a steady revenue flow."
But the country "too readily seeks individual projects or initiatives, even crops like vanilla, to be the panacea for its problems, rather than concentrating on far-ranging reforms, including the removal of impediments, to improve the wider prospects for investment and business."
Corruption will be another danger, Barker warns: "The resource-rich provinces of Western and Southern Highlands provinces provide stark warnings, having some of the worst services in the country and high levels of financial abuse.
"Landowner groups in the logging areas demonstrate how readily some leaders can hijack the benefit stream from royalties and consume the proceeds, often in beer and other services in the urban centres of PNG and overseas."
Frank Yourn, executive director of the Australia PNG Business Council, says interest from Australian companies in PNG has soared as the gas deal has firmed up.
Perth-based Clough Engineering and Queensland-based Curtin Brothers have already won $500m contracts for the gas project, providing 700 jobs in Queensland alone besides many more in PNG.
"One of the opportunities the project offers is for the development of the small and medium-sized business sector, for the long term," Yourn says. "In most economies they are the biggest drivers of job growth."
But the cost of doing business is already rising as much of Port Moresby's office and housing real estate is being sucked into the gas project. "And there's inevitably a flow-on effect in wage demands on employers," Yourn says.
Chand concludes: "The worry is that despite all PNG's growth, there is little noticeable difference in the quality of life at the village level. A large windfall from gas will not make a difference unless the flow of resources from the centre to the front line of service delivery is improved." |
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