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By Yym C Samson, Hon. Governor Allan Bird, I respect you as my leader and the leader of this great nation.However, this post may seem to attack you, my leader; but I have to do it because it is for good of your leadership and for the 8+ million people of PNG. Honourable Governor, I just want to refute your post on the social media dated 23 Feb 2020 (Some Thoughts On Government Borrowing). The post was good with its title but the content does not sense the way it has to be. You attacked the former PO government who has effectively delivered much for this country. I understand that you have no knowledge about economic circumstances surrounding our country which forced PO government to borrow. If you know it and deliberately posted on social media, then your post is simply a politically motivated lie. You are our young leader who is with our current government that vehemently talks more about taking back PNG and turn it into Top Black Rich Christian Nation on Earth where no child is left behind. In such government which is pro-Christian, we don't have to preach lies to mislead our people and deny God. As a Christian leader, we don't have to take such action to publicly blame someone without good reasons. Such behavior by a national leader is an unhealthy for our current Government's slogan based on Christian faith. Mr Governor, if you don't know why PO government borrowed, please let me briefly explain to you. There are two reasons why PO government borrowed. 1. To fund the deficit budget attributed to the mismanagement of the previous governments before PO government. 2. To develop the country for Maximum Economic Return. You mentioned that there was no economic returns to repay the loan which accumulates to current debt that our economy has today. Hon. Governor let me tell you why there was no economic return even though it was PO Government's main target to maximize economic returns. Before I tell you this, let me briefly go through ecopolitical history of PNG from independence to the government before PO government so that we may not argue on this. In 19th April 1975 Kina was first introduced by BPNG to replace Australian Dollar. Right after the independence, our K1.00 is equivalent to US$1.00. At that moment, our economy was the most powerful in the Pacific; we have more than enough money to develop and run the country. Besides our reserves were accumulating and hence we need nothing in terms of finance. However, this was not attributed to the performance of our fathers but of the colonial government. Our founding father Grand Chief Sir Michael Thomas Somare didn't have educational qualification, but yet with the aid of foreign advisors he got the independence. Congratulations Grand Chief Sir MTS. We love you GCSMTS for job well done. But the subsequent Prime Ministers after GCSMTS - some similar in qualifications to that of GCSMTS while other don't. Whether they were educated or not, they were too young to run the country and entirely depended on foreign advisors which we also continue to do now. The foreign advisors capitalized on lack of patriotic wisdom and knowledge in the cycle of our national leadership. The advisors in partnership with our leaders diverted our (public) money and invested in foreign countries in their own name. Such act of embezzlement and money laundering developed foreign ccountries. For instance, those who did business investment in Australia developed Cairns. See how many properties are owned by PNG nationals in Australia who are the families, relatives and associates of the previous government leaders. How did they do this? They succeeded in writing public service grant proposals and diverted the public money into ghost accounts. In return false acquittals were made in the name of public service delivery. So, our money was licking out in the hands of treasonous leaders in an unprecedented massive amount. During that period, we didn't have proper reporting platforms like social media, mobile phone networks, etc to report the real life situations immediately to the appropriate authorities. Our leaders took advantage of this, and kept on being ignorant and turned their back on us. Consequently, the government ran out of money. The public service delivery was lacking. Hence, school facilities ran down, airstrips in the remote rural areas were shutdown, commercial road networks that connected remote villages ceased to exist, etc. Now the people were crying for public services that they had been receiving during the colonial times. The Government's response to this was an agent. To restore the basic services, the government needed money which resulted in deficit budget for the first time. In this situation, what can the government do? They had to use our reserve money. They got the reserve but it neither restored the public service nor developed the country as it all went to the thieves again through corrupt deal. Now our reserve was depleting and the economic situation was going from bad to worse; everything was going back to primitive state. This put our economy in emergency situation. What can our government do to resolve this? The simple solution was to borrow money from international financial institutions. The government planned to borrow money for the first time now but there were two economic situations at that moment to do with the borrowed funds. First was to fund the deficit budget to maintain the status quo. Next was to improve infrastructure development and develop the country for maximum economic return. If the government to maintain status quo, it had to borrow less; if it for infrastructure improvement and development purposes, it had to borrow more. In the history of Papua New Guinea, none of the Prime Ministers managed the borrowed money. Everytime they borrow money they failed to achieve the purpose. Therefore, they were scared of borrowing more for infrastructure improvements and development purposes hence they borrowed just enough money to maintain the status quo. While continuously doing this, the population growth was increasing exponentially. The demand at home was increasing in an unprecedented way; more school facilities, medical equipment, roads etc were needed to meet the growing demand. It wasn't a need for one particular district or community but all districts and communities in Papua New Guinea. It was a national emergency situation that needed Government's instance response. Moreover most of these needed things were not produced here in the country. We are import based economy thus; we relay heavily on foreign manufactured goods and services. Besides our old fashioned ports cannot accommodate imports of such demand. Furthermore, to make it even worse, the foreign investors lost investment confidence in the country because of three reasons. 1. Political Instability 2. Law and Order Problem 3. Underdeveloped Infrastructure Development How can we solve this? We needed more money. It was a big problem for this country. The government had huge economic pressure. We already have debts and the government cannot risk the economy. There was increasing fear of borrowing because we have records of failures in management of such funds. In such scenario, our government borrowed just enough to fund the deficit budget to maintain the status quo as usual. Consequently, the population increasing, unemployment rate skyrocketing, crime rate doubled and foreign investors lost their interest. As such, we were at the verge of losing independence and sovereign authority? In this situation people were crying and praying with doubts and uncertainties thinking, "who will save us from this economic situation? Who will lead us boldly to claim our national sovereignty?" In the leadership of PMPO's patriotic aspirations, he made a fearless move. Unlike previous governments who borrowed to maintain status quo and hadn't cleaned the mess for almost 40 years, Mr O'Neil, with boldness borrowed and restored everything that we lost for almost these 4 decades. In the matter of fact, Rt Hon Peter O'Neil had restless days and night. With tireless effort he maintained political stability, improved law & order and transformed and modernized infrastructure development in our country. Consequently, we regained foreign investment confidence. He knew that multibillion dollar foreign investors will be very proud to reach our shores with the help of newly constructed ports of modern architecture that will safely accommodate their business assets according to their expectations. By then, Mr O'Neil was very confident that the country will soon enjoy the boom of economic return as the investors create employment opportunities, pay cooperate tax and share other benefits with us. The other way is to export our products to overseas markets. All these efforts to maximize economic returns are only be possible by infrastructure and human capital development. That's why PO government effectively delivered infrastructure development and Free Education Policy implementation. Coming back to Allan Bird: Hon Governor, let me ask you a conditional business question. If you want to start a profitable poultry project at your underdeveloped land left by your grandfather, would you make a profit while you are still cleaning and developing the land with bank loan? If the answer is no, the the same is for Peter O'Neil. Peter O'Neil didn't complete his work and we toppled his government. Let's stop jumping the gun and misleading the people with lies. Send your political views to us : email : pngfacts@gmail.com Next : EAST SEPIK GOVERNORS BIRDS COMMENTS IN PARLIAMENT ON DEPUTY CHIEF JUSTICE KANDAKASI FURTHER FUELS UNWARRANTED DISRESPECT TO PNG JUDICIARY Note: Let Your Views be heard : Send all your Political Commentaries to us through our email : pngfacts@gmail.com Share this Comments are closed.
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