Category Archives: Devpolicy

"...To answer the question, “how would developing countries know what the private sector is contributing to their development?”, I identified those indicators already used in international corporate sustainability and responsibility frameworks that are most relevant to development and proposed using them for a case study of Papua New Guinea. I expected to source most data from company reports, direct contact with businesses, membership surveys by business organisations ... and company websites. In the event, this proved unrealistic – most PNG businesses are not registered public companies so they have no obligation to publish details of their development contributions ..." [read more]

"Lae, on PNG’s northern coast, is the country’s second city and industrial hub. It is also the capital of PNG’s largest province, Morobe. Its main government hospital, the Angau Hospital, is home to PNG’s most successful Family Support Centre (FSC), which provides medical support and psychosocial care to survivors of family and sexual violence. Supported by Medecins san Frontieres (MSF) since 2008, in the last five years the FSC has provided care to over 11,500 patients..." [read more]

"In past Development Policy Centre blog posts about the Promoting Effective Public Expenditure (PEPE) survey, Colin Wiltshire (here) and Andrew Anton Mako (here) have described the enormous challenges facing rural, particularly remote, schools in Papua New Guinea. This post focuses on the metropolis: it explores positive and negative changes that have occurred in three urban schools in PNG over the past decade..." [read more].

In his latest post, Andrew Anton Mako reports on his experiences of conducting a major survey into public service delivery in PNG's Enga province as part of the Promoting Effective Public Expenditure (PEPE) project between the National Research Institute (NRI) of PNG and the ANU’s Development Policy Centre [read more].

"For what seems like decades, evidence-based policy has been a mantra. Practitioners are aware of this, just as enlightened researchers are aware of the pressures on aid agency staff. But even with the best will in the world, turning evidence into practice can be challenging...  In my (new) job with AusAID, I reflected on the implications of these findings for our program in Papua New Guinea (PNG)..." [read more].

Stephen Howes offers insights on key political and economic issues in PNG and the PNG-Australia and the questions these raise for the future of the country and the bilateral relationship in his recent post to Devpolicy.org. [Listen to a follow-up interview on Radio Australia on 15 January 2013.]