Country Strategy and Program Update 2005–2006: Papua New Guinea

With the overarching objective of reducing poverty, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) strategy for Papua New Guinea (PNG) focuses on strengthening governance, supporting private sector development, and improving social conditions. PNG displays characteristics of ADB’s Weakly Performing Developing Member Countries, underlying the difficult operating environment for ADB and other development partners. Weak public sector management and ineffective public services remain the main development problems. ADB's short-term priorities will be: consolidation (focusing on relationships with the Government and development partners), policy dialogue in key sectors, administration and implementation of existing projects and very selective identification of operations to deliver clear results. Based on lessons learned, e.g., in supporting private sector development, ADB will explore alternative channels for the delivery of assistance to achieve development objectives.