Rowan Callick, Asia-Pacific editor
Papua New Guinea's desperate business community has drawn up an economic rescue plan for the next government, which will be elected when parliament meets on Monday - probably led by Michael Somare, for a third term.
The country is in deep depression, well into its third year of negative growth. Public debt is 7.15 billion kina ($3.4 billion) - almost half the gross domestic product. Within 10 years, except for the Lihir gold mine, all its resources industry, producing 27 per cent of GDP, will be closed.
Even if the $6.5 billion gas pipeline to Brisbane does at last land enough clients to go ahead, it will not earn the country any revenue for five years.
Mike Manning, the executive director of the private-sector-funded Institute of National Affairs, said yesterday: "Our economy is in terribly, terribly deep trouble."
The priorities urged by business, following a survey of PNG's private sector, are to repair the country's collapsing infrastructure, to establish an independent commission against corruption, to restore law and order, to process work permits and visas properly and promptly, to provide greater security about government decisions, and to lower commercial interest rates - running at more than 15 per cent, a substantial spread over Treasury bills which are at 10.5 per cent.
The President of the PNG Chamber of Commerce and Industry, accountant Michael Mayberry, said businesses were closing down. He warned national leaders: "Do something or the country steps off the edge into the economic abyss."
Up to 300 trucks are queuing at any one time to negotiate the Highlands Highway, the country's main commercial artery. A tow truck is pulling them one by one over the Daulo Pass between Lae and Goroka, and a 5 kilometre stretch of the road is in imminent danger of being washed away.
Mr Manning said restoring the road would take $220 million a year for the next four to five years.
A dozen pylons taking power from the Hides gas field to the Porgera gold mine have been felled during violence that has undermined elections in the Southern Highlands and Enga, causing 15 of 109 parliamentary seats to go unfilled for now.
From 30 to 50 per cent of PNG's coffee harvest - its most important rural income earner, on which more than 1 million people depend for their main cash income - has failed to get to market this season, because of crime and poor roads.
The next government will also be confronted with the urgent need for some "very tough decision making" on the macro-economy, said Mr Manning.
The Government of Mekere Morauta stopped the economic rot exacerbated by its predecessor led by Bill Skate, and government revenues are running on target. But spending is well over budget - it rose by 21.4 per cent in the first quarter - and debt is high while exports are struggling, in part because of failing infrastructure.
The Morauta Government privatised several businesses, but has failed to attract fresh investment from beyond PNG except in the latest case in which a stake in the struggling monopoly telecommunications provider, Telikom, was sold to Fiji's monopoly telco, ATH, controlled by the government-run Fiji National Provident Fund.
The coalition of parties led by Sir Michael's National Alliance has the inside running - but cannot be complacent, given Sir Michael's 1987 loss to then outsider Paias Wingti, who is back in Parliament as the numbers man for Morauta's People's Democratic Movement.
But whoever wins on Monday will be confronted with enormous challenges, both in hauling PNG out of depression and in convincing the public that the political process can regain its integrity.
At the election, in Enga 317,000 votes were counted in a province whose entire population is 295,000. And in the rest of the country, 2.65 million people voted - more than the whole over-18 population.
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