Mining enclaves and taxation

This paper examines certain macroeconomic effects of major mining projects in developing countries, paying special attention to the case of Papua New Guinea. It goes on to assess the contribution that such projects can make to economic development indirectly through their contributions to government revenue. This paper reviews existing evidence on the linkage effects of foreign investment in mining projects in developing countries and presents as new evidence the results of a study on the macroeconomic effects of major mining projects in Papua New Guinea. Considerable support is found for the proposition that such projects tend to perform as enclaves, having only weak direct links with host national economies. This paper stresses the importance of applying fiscal arrangements which can be expected to appropriate a large share of the mineral rent from intra-marginal mining projects while preserving the incentive to invest. Fiscal arrangements of this type are being applied in Papua New Guinea and are indeed able to capture very large benefits for the country. In Papua New Guinea the enclave nature of large-scale mining projects is consistent with their making large contributions to progress towards national objectives, and this paper argues that given the application of appropriate fiscal arrangements, this conclusion can be extended to other developing countries.     

Options for cement production in Papua New Guinea: A study in choice of technology

This paper examines the technical options for local production of cement to satisfy Papua New Guinea's needs. Both rotary and vertical kiln methods and different plant sizes are compared on economic grounds and also assessed against national objectives. Because of Papua New Guinea's small and scattered demand for cement and high internal transport costs, the smaller vertical kiln units are more economic while small-scale manufacture is also more in line with national objectives.     

Papua New Guinea: longer term developments and recent economic problems

Papua New Guinea (PNG) has much to learn from the Indonesian economic experience of coping with one booming sector while creating an environment in which the economy could generate jobs. PNG's macroeconomic policy adjustments to the boom-bust cycles which characterise its economy work extremely well by comparison to most other developing countries experiencing the same difficulties. At the microeconomic level, policy improvement has been harder, with the rhetoric far out-distancing the actual advances. The challenge is to improve the productivity of the agricultural sector, to raise the education levels, and to attract investment to provide employment. At present the investment environment is bleak because of the deteriorating law and order situation.     

Vulnerability to Poverty in Papua New Guinea in 1996

This paper uses cross‐section data from the 1996 Papua New Guinea Household Survey to assess household vulnerability to poverty in Papua New Guinea. Vulnerability varies across regions, household size, gender and level of education of households. We use a simple empirical model that permits estimation of vulnerability to poverty assuming that households have the same conditional distribution of consumption in a stationary environment. Although this approach does not capture all dimensions of vulnerability, it at least raises the policy interest that vulnerability should be considered alongside poverty.     

Can integrated infrastructure investment plans contribute to more effective public spending? The case of Mozambique

All countries, especially developing countries with limited financial resources, face difficult decisions in prioritising public funds for investment projects in the face of multiple demands in order to achieve strategic public goals. Effective investment often requires coordination between different institutions and the management of political pressure to divert investment in support of private interests. It also requires the identification of appropriate sources of funds for different purposes. The preparation of an integrated infrastructure investment plan (IIIP) that uses structured approaches to review investment proposals has been suggested, and adopted in some cases, as an instrument to address these challenges and bridge the gap between national planning and sectoral budgeting. This article considers the experience of Mozambique in deploying an IIIP as well as some recent events and concludes that the instrument may be helpful as part of a system of investment planning and allocation but that it has significant limitations.     

Cost recovery in a project context: Some World Bank experience in tropical Africa

The shortage of government recurrent funding in Africa has led to widespread deterioration of public services. One reason for this shortage is the substantial consumption of public resources in Africa by parapublic organizations which elsewhere in the world cover costs or generate surpluses. In contrast, the World Bank emphasizes the development of institutions which cover costs either through sale of output or user charges. The Bank's experience with projects in non-market sectors is also of interest, e.g. primary education in which public subsidies predominate. Another reason for the shortage is that government budgeting – both revenues and expenditures – is rarely forward-looking. Aggregate future expenditure claims are often underestimated. Hence more attention to forward budgeting is needed. In general governments need to be far more concerned with getting projects which generate their own finance if broad-based public services are to become the rule.     

Literacy and Intrahousehold Externalities

The size of the intrahousehold externality created when a literate household member provides literacy services to illiterate members is estimated in this paper, using a model of children's height-for-age in Papua New Guinea. This externality appears to be large. These results support the use of a new measure of literacy, developed by Basu and Foster (1998) to take account of the gains when illiterates live in households where at least one person is literate. Regional rankings change when the new measure of literacy is used, suggesting that policies guided by the usual measure of adult literacy may overlook an important pathway for human development.     

Tax Elasticities and the Impact of Discretionary Tax Measures on Government Revenue in Papua New Guinea, 1975–92

This paper evaluates tax elasticities and the impact of discretionary tax measures on government revenue in Papua New Guinea (PNG) using a dynamic macroeconometric model of taxation which captures the interaction between GDP, individual tax systems and individual tax revenues and bases. Our findings show that economic growth and discretionary tax changes have both been effective in mobilizing additional tax revenue. However, the responsiveness of the individual tax system reflected base-to-GDP elasticity except personal income tax whose elasticity reflected increased tax rates.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:
P., Abeygunawardena et al. Environment and Economics in Project Preparation: ten Asian cases
Roderick, Brazier and Sahala, Sianipar Indonesia's Anti-Monopoly Law and its Impact on Small and Medium Enterprises
Takatoshi, Ito and Anne O., Krueger Deregulation and Interdependence in the Asia-Pacific Region
Takatoshi, Ito and Anne O., Krueger Foreign Direct Investment in East Asian Economic Development
Theodore H., Moran Foreign Direct Investment and Development
United Nations Development Programme Human Development Report 2000
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade Asia's Financial Markets: capitalising on reform
Benedict Y., Imbun Industrial and Employment Relations in the Papua New Guinea Mining Industry
Donald K., Emmerson Indonesia Beyond Suharto: polity, economy, society, transition
Hanah, Piek Technology Development in Rural Industries: a study of China's Collectives
Hans, Hendrischke and Feng, Chongyi The Political Economy of China's Provinces
Yanrui, Wu The Economics of the East Asia Steel Industries: production, consumption and trade
Keith, Maguire The Rise of Modern Taiwan
Youngil, Lim Technology and Productivity: the Korean way of learning and catching up
Yasheng, Huang FDI in China: an Asian perspective
Yadong, Luo International Investment Strategies in the People's Republic of China
Moha, Asri Abdullah Small and Medium Enterprises in Malaysia: policy issues and challenges
Charles, Feinstein and Christopher, Howe Chinese Technology Transfer in the 1990s: current experience, historical problems and international perspectives     

Report of the working group on the machinery of government

Perhaps the most important point coming out of the Group's discussions was the need for more work in the area of government institutions in developing countries. Every member of the Group had his views based on first-hand experience, but it was very difficult to develop a great deal of sustained coherent thinking. Given the importance of the subject matter, some thought should be given to how best to develop a more authoritative analysis of the problems involved.     

援外中国医疗队在海外收获感谢

On February 24, 2023, Chongqing Municipal Health Commission held a sum-up meeting on the work of the 11th Chinese medical team to Papua New Guinea and the 5th medical team to Barbados. Medical workers from Chongqing received many letters of appreciation from Chinese companies, Chinese communities, chambers of commerce of Chinese companies, and chambers of commerce of Barbados companies.     

广西公共财政农业支出和农村居民收入的实证研究

采用灰色关联分析方法,对广西公共财政农业支出和农村居民收入增长之间的关系进行实证研究。结果表明:广西公共财政农业支出额度与促进农村居民增收效率不匹配,即支援不发达地区资金中用于农业的支出额度较小,但其促进农村居民增收的作用最强,支农支出所占份额最大而其促进农村居民收入的作用很弱,广西公共财政农业支出绩效处于较低水平层次。最后,提出大力增加农业支出、调整农业支出结构的建议。     

Mexico from bust to boom: A political evaluation of the 1976–1979 stabilization programme

This paper evaluates Mexico's recent experience of economic stabilization policies (under the the 3-yr Extended Fund Facility arranged with the IMF in September 1976) from a comparative politics standpoint. By comparison with various South American experiences of inflation and stabilization that were discussed in the same Wilson Centre workshop, Mexico's short-term performance must be rated quite favourably. This was not a case in which Fund orthodoxy prevailed at every point, nor was the Fund analysis accepted without qualification by Mexico's policy-markers. At the end of the period, economic disequilibria, as measured by IMF criteria, remained considerably larger than the 3-yr plan had envisaged, but ‘confidence’ had been restored and rapid growth was in prospect. The interpretation offered in the paper is that Mexico's cyclical pattern of presidential politics largely determined the effective contents of the stabilization package, and that the resilience of the Mexican system of political management goes far to explain why the economic outcome was more favourable than in the South American cases. An accident of geological endowment (the nation's huge oil resources) certainly accentuated the process of recovery from ‘bust’ to ‘boom’, but this factor did not operate in isolation, and should not be considered an adequate explanation on its own. The impact of a geological endowment upon economic conditions depends upon political mediation. However, although this paper seeks to highlight the contribution of Mexican political management to the recent short-term economic improvement, it concludes with some qualifications. The final section considers some constraints on the scope and efficacy of Mexican ‘reformism’, particularly in relation to longer-term and more structural problems.     

The fourth mobilization: New phase of the Tachai movement

By the early 1970s the ‘Learn from Tachai’ campaign in China was seen there as having had a marked effect in increasing agricultural production. In 1975 the movement was made the subject of a national conference and then launched afresh on a broader and more intense scale, with the unit for emulation becoming the country rather than the village. It is now commensurate with the great mass movements of the 1950s which transformed China's rural society. The paper describes the new movement, illustrating its impact from the writer's field experience. (The paper may be seen as a sequel to the writer's ‘Learning from Tachai’, World Development. Vol. 3, Nos. 7 & 8 (July – August 1975)).     

Regulating for telecommunications competition in developing countries: Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea is a low‐middle income, developing, Pacific country whose telecommunications market has developed under regulatory arrangements strongly influenced by Australian policymaking. Nevertheless, it demonstrates very weak performance compared to similar low‐middle income countries. Why does a country whose regulatory regime draws on current international recommended ‘best practice’ perform so poorly? We develop an inquiry framework based on World Bank and the International Telecommunications Union guidelines for assessing the effectiveness of regulatory arrangements in a developing country. The framework takes account of developing country challenges: limited capacity, limited commitment, limited accountability, limited fiscal efficiency, and trade‐offs between factors that take account of these limits. The analysis indicates the most likely explanation for poor performance derives from lack of investment and an unstable set of ownership arrangements constraining government‐owned Telikom from being an effective competitor. Weaknesses in regulator accountability provisions may have contributed to obscuring poor performance. Introducing at least one more foreign operator will improve outcomes only with clear separation of government ownership and regulatory activities and credible commitment from political agents to refrain from interfering in operations of both the incumbent firm and regulatory agencies.     

Hungarian agriculture: A model for the socialist world?

Hungary's status as a model in agriculture is examined in terms of its economic, social and political performance, its planning and organizational components and the contextual factors affecting its transferability. In economic and social performance the Hungarian strategy compares favourably with the rest of Eastern Europe and the USSR. Planning and institutional factors contributing to this performance include the New Economic Mechanism planning approach, autonomous agricultural producers' co-operatives, new structures for diffusion of technology, and integration of household producers into the commodity system. While the transferability of the model remains doubtful due to factors such as size, technical base, and political choices, increased participation in the world economy may force the USSR and the rest of Eastern Europe into reforms bearing some resemblance to those in Hungary.     

Socially weighted real income comparisons: An application to India

In an article in 1976, Amartya Sen develops a general theoretical framework for comparing real consumption over time and across countries that dispenses, in the words of Graaff, ‘with the time-honoured device of drawing a distinction between the size and distribution of the national income’. After developing a general theoretical framework taking distribution as an integral part of real income comparison, Sen applies it to a comparison of rural real consumption per head in Indian states in 1961–1962. In the present paper we show that the application of clustering techniques to Sen's data on Indian states provides an alternative way to partially order observations by real consumption per head within the framework of Sen's approach to distribution-inclusive measurement of real consumption. This alternative way has some desirable empirical characteristics. Second, we explore with factor analysis whether this alternative method yields sensible empirical interrelationships with other characteristics with which a priori reasoning and knowledge suggest it ought to be correlated. The results suggest that the cluster analysis applied within Sen's theoretical framework provides a valid way of comparing consumption levels.     

East European aid to India

The aid-relationship is part of a wider economic relationship between India and the East European countries, in a far more integrated sense than is the case with some of India's other donors. The group has been a significant though not a dominant source of aid to India, the USSR being the most important member of the group. Easy generalizations about the terms of East European aid, in comparison to aid from other sources, are not possible. The same is true for India's experience in the actual utilization of aid from various sources. The main usefulness of the East European countries as a source of aid has lain in their willingness to give aid for particular public-sector projects and in improving India's bargaining powers vis-à-vis other donors.     

中国与南太岛五国双向旅游签证政策变迁研究

通过梳理中国与南太岛五国的旅游签证政策变迁过程,结合中国与南太岛五国未来旅游合作的发展趋势,从优化签证政策及提高签证政策效果等方面提出相关建议:一是尽快实现中国与巴布亚新几内亚、萨摩亚、瓦努阿图的互免签证;二是进一步开通中国与南太岛五国的直航航班,包括增加航班数量和拓展覆盖城市。