Expensive Apec summit sows division in PNG
After three decades of promoting free trade as a panacea to poverty, the Apec grouping of nations that includes the United States and China is holding its lavish annual leaders meeting in the country that can least afford it.
Barely penetrated by roads and scarred by violence, Papua New Guinea hopes the parade of world leaders will lift the mountainous Pacific nation of hundreds of tribal groups out of obscurity and attract investment.
But the expense has brought criticism when the Government has a budget crisis, basic medicines are scarce, and polio, eliminated from all but a handful of countries, has returned. In 2015, the International Monetary Fund estimated that upgrading the capital for the event and hosting a year of related meetings could cost US$1 billion ($1.47b).
Australia, the biggest foreign aid donor to Papua New Guinea and former colonial occupier, as well as China and other countries have absorbed some of the cost of this week’s summit but critics have already been given plenty of vindication.
In an eye-popping move, the Government imported 40 luxury Maserati cars to whisk VIPs among convention venues in the secure bubble of the Apec meetings. Officials said the Government would sell them to recover the cost, sparking more disbelief and suspicions of a corrupt scheme.
Chinese government money, meanwhile, has built what has been dubbed a boulevard to nowhere in the capital Port Moresby, a city described by the World Bank as among the world’s most violent due to high unemployment and brazen criminal gangs known as “raskols”. Construction of an iconic building — Apec Haus — for the leaders’ summit was paid for by oil and gas company Oil Search, which operates all of Papua New Guinea’s oil fields, in exchange for tax credits. That avoided an immediate cost for the Government but will erode its revenue in the future.
“I think the money should have been used to fix our backyard instead of decorating the front porch. We have health, education and infrastructure deficiencies that need to be addressed,” said activist and writer Martyn Namorong.
“Many teachers haven’t been paid and hospitals lack medicines,” he said. “There is so much misery experienced by ordinary Papua New Guineans while the elite party with the world like there is no tomorrow.”
What the talkfest will produce, other than its signature photo of world leaders in locally themed shirts, is unclear. In the impenetrable language of Apec, the meeting is about “Harnessing Inclusive Opportunities, Embracing the Digital Future”.
Former New Zealand Reserve Bank Governor Allan Bollard, now executive director of the Apec secretariat, said the meeting is complicated by the tensions between China and the US over trade and the broader backlash against globalisation.